The Mental Health Support for Drought Affected Communities Initiative provides funding over two years to build the capacity of drought affected communities to respond to the psychological impact of drought. Funding under the Mental Health Support for Drought Affected Communities Initiative is intended to:

• provide community outreach and crisis counselling;
• raise community awareness; and
• provide education and training for health workers.

The Eyre Peninsula Division of General Practice has held preliminary discussions with existing drought relief agencies to establish opportunities for collaborative ventures that would best meet the needs of our communities in drought affected areas, and fulfil the obligations of our funding service agreement with the Commonwealth.

Amongst the program activities that are to be conducted, the EPDGP is to:

• contribute to the overall drought response in communities by leading and developing a local, primary care based mental health drought plan in consultation with local community leaders and service providers in order to fully take into account existing activity and services;
• identify target communities to be addressed by the Project;
• establish and develop linkages with key organisations (including, but not limited to beyondblue, the Australian General Practice Network, other Divisions of General Practice, and relevant health professional organisations) and work with these organisations to improve community awareness and knowledge of mental illness;
• undertake community outreach activities, including forming relationships with key community organisations (eg local councils, schools), promoting community awareness of the impact of drought circumstances on mental health, raising community awareness of mental illness, promoting help-seeking by individuals, families and communities; and
• develop mechanisms to evaluate the effectiveness of the community outreach and crisis counselling provided, including statistics on the number of interventions and referrals (for individuals and groups), information on the development of linkages with relevant health professionals and referral pathways, and qualitative feedback from individuals, families and communities assisted by the activities under this Project.