Expanded centre opened to help headspace Albany better support for community’s youth

Headspace Albany officially welcomed the community into their new and improved offices on Friday, with a formal opening and community day held at its expanded centre on St Emile Way. The newly expanded space was designed based on feedback from the centre’s Youth Reference Group. Significant changes to the centre’s waiting area aim to increase privacy and reduce stimulation for young people accessing the service. Headspace, which sees 10 per cent of Albany’s youth population annually, offers a variety of services to young people under the age of 25 including mental health, employment and GP services. The renovations also include new counselling rooms and a GP room. Reference group members Haidn Bond and Kiara Dijkstra MC’d the opening event, sharing their experiences of receiving support from headspace to highlight why the expansion was important. Manager Andrew Wenzel spoke with passion about the upgrades, which officially opened just days before headspace Albany’s 15th birthday. He said the opening was a chance to celebrate a culmination of six years of advocacy from the time they first realised the centre was “challenged for space”. “I’m really proud of the place we have here,” he said. “It’s an appropriately amazing place for young people who often reach out to us at a time when things aren’t so awesome and aren’t so worth celebrating. “If someone has mustered up the courage to do that, it is really important the space they come into, to open up to a stranger about what is going on, is a beautiful and safe environment.” O’Connor MHR Rick Wilson, Youth Focus chief executive Derry Simpson and headspace national’s Sharenne Foal also spoke at the opening. The centre was then officially opened by members of the Youth Reference Group after Alex Wenzel performed. Prior to Friday’s opening, Mr Wenzel said the old centre was no longer able to meet the growing demand for services. “It was getting to the point where the thing that stopped us from seeing the number of young people coming through was the fact that we just didn’t have free rooms,” he said. “So we have been able to expand our premises and have a bit of a re-build also taking into account a lot of feedback from young people and families that have come and used headspace centre.” Mr Wenzel said the new rooms would enable headspace staff to see more young people to keep up with growing demand in the community. “We will be able to see people faster because we are not limited by rooms,” he said. “We hope to be able to increase staffing to meet that demand rather than just having to increase wait times.” The additional rooms will also allow headspace Albany to resume hosting placements for allied health students. “We have always had quite an active role in providing placements for allied health students — university students studying physiology, social work, or occupational therapy — and we had to stop that for a while because we didn’t have a desk for those people to sit at,” Mr Wenzel said. “We are really hoping for the increase that we had for the building will be met with an increase in funding, which will enable us to have a few more staff on to meet the demand we have.”