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The Initial Assessment and Referral (IAR) program is a Commonwealth Government initiative embedded within PHNs, which aims to support the primary care and mental health workforce to provide and improve access to tailored mental health care, in line with the stepped care approach to service delivery. Over the last year, CHN focused on developing and localising the IAR program to deliver local and value-based training to ACT’s GPs, mental health clinicians and other members of the primary mental health care workforce. This training enables clinicians to use the IAR Decision Support Tool (IAR-DST), an evidence-informed tool that can be used in conjunction with clinical judgement and expertise to support mental health referrals and recommendations. Local IAR training is delivered by CHN’s accredited Training and Support Officer (TSO).
Local training was delivered for the first time in the ACT when CHN’s training program began in February 2024. Since then:
- 6 locally delivered training sessions were conducted
- 18 total participants were trained
- 11 GPs were trained: 8 through CHN’s local training program; 3 through national training.
- consistent positive feedback was received from GPs and other clinicians on the local delivery of the training
Alongside the planning, commencement and delivery of the local training, CHN has supported the IAR program through a number of activities. This has included service mapping of CHN’s commissioned mental health, psychosocial and AOD services, to develop a resource that can support clinicians to make high quality mental health referrals and also provide a useful snapshot of local services for broader stakeholders. CHN also established an internal IAR Working Group and developed numerous external stakeholder relationships, to promote collaboration, support and understanding of the value of the IAR across the wider community.
Testimonials
Some comments from training participants:
“It’s a useful tool to establish which patients would possibly benefit from either a community level of care vs GP lead and Psychologist.”
“Great presenter, very encouraging and supportive.”
“Very good webinar, engaging and interesting.”
“I will engage more with the tool (IAR-DST) and Head to Health.”
“A useful tool that can be utilised for patients to risk stratify them into appropriate level of care.”