Karkana hub push

Advocates strongly pushing for a Wimmera mental-health centre have identified Horsham’s dormant Karkana on the outskirts of the rural city as a potential project site.

They have ‘quietly’ worked on the concept for six months after raising the idea for a dedicated centre more than two years ago.

Advocate members Graham Gerlach and Gavin Morrow, after initial assessments, are confident the Grahams Bridge Road site at Haven, which includes buildings and land, would be ideal as a new mental-health centre.

“We’ve had a good look through it and although it might need a significant tidy-up and an injection of some serious funding, we believe it would be absolutely perfect,” Mr Morrow said.

“At the moment we have people needing help going voluntarily or being taken involuntarily to hospital for treatment, who are then later being told they need to travel to Ballarat.

“To me that’s akin to promoting drink-driving.”

The group’s push, based on identifying a pressing need to ‘significantly’ strengthen mental-health services in the Wimmera, emerged from community organisation Healthy Minds Horsham.

Rotary clubs across the region have also indicated support for a dedicated centre, as well as general improvements to regional mental-health services.

“We’ve been wanting to get this idea moving for six months and working behind the scenes assessing what’s out there and what would need to be done to provide facilities for patients, staff and specialists,” Mr Morrow said.

“What we’re after is something that can provide immediate walk-in as well as short and long-term care.

“We have been looking over drawings and plan to discuss it further with Uniting Wimmera.

“We want to go forward with the current custodians.”

Mr Gerlach, a Rotary member, said authorities had ignored Wimmeramallee communities over a crucial health issue.

“We are sick of hearing what can’t be done and ‘we need another study’ and so on. I believe if the government won’t immediately get on with a crisis centre and mental-health facility then the community might have to show them how,” he said.

“There will be no one in our large Wimmera catchment who will not support such a facility.

“We have seen the tremendous community development of many significant projects in the past.

“The Karkana venue is right here, put there by the community and it could ultimately evolve into a very large mental-health facility, similar to those in Geelong.

“Horsham is the largest city between Ballarat and Adelaide, Portland and Mildura, and there is nothing here.

“It’s time for our community to take control of what is needed so watch this space.”

Mr Morrow said it would be paramount the Horsham and broader Wimmera community supported the project.

“Karkana has a long history of support and engagement from everyday people. It’s a site that many hold close because it has been such a community project.”

A workforce of people with disabilities started processing vegetables with Karkana Support Services at Grahams Bridge Road in 1979.

Karkana went into administration in 2009 and community health organisation Uniting took over the site and built on the service.

But a 2019 agency review of the centre’s support for people with disabilities after the roll-out of a National Disability Insurance Scheme concluded the site had failed to ‘take the next step’ and was unfit for purpose in a progressing era of disability care.

Buildings and land have since sat relatively unused.

Options

Uniting Wimmera, which still manages the site, had been exploring centre options before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Considerations have involved how to best use the asset, financially or physically, while meeting the needs of the centre’s original intent and expectations of community supporters.

The site includes two primary buildings as well as storage sheds.

Uniting Wimmera chief executive Josh Koenig said the site’s future had remained in a holding pattern during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We are certainly open to any concepts or ideas, whether from the government or from private investment,’ he said.

“We’re not closed off to having any conversations if appropriate players are willing to be involved. We’re not saying ‘no’ to any options at the moment but a provision of selling the site would be that proceeds would be invested back into the community for use as it was originally intended.”

Support

The advocacy group has shared the proposal with Wimmera politician Emma Kealy who agreed the concept was worth exploring.

Ms Kealy, the Victorian Coalition’s mental-health representative as well as Member for Lowan, said the site could work as part of an expanded system to address regional mentalhealth issues.

“Karkana certainly has considerable potential, and this type of project would follow on from the centre’s long-time community health and welfare function and reputation,” she said.

“Deteriorating mental-health in our region has been a constant and insidious scourge that can be everything from blatantly obvious or suddenly raise its head unexpectedly – both can devastate families and communities.

“This is being compounded by a lack of mental-health beds available locally and people often have to get acute mental-health support in Ballarat or beyond.

“Being able to access the type of professional health service needed is getting to a point where it is more about being a necessity than an option.

“We simply don’t enjoy the same access to the necessary services in other parts of the state. There is a big gap in service provision.”

Ms Kealy added with a general shortfall of mental-health beds from Mildura to the coast and Ballarat to the South Australian border, establishing a profound service centre in the heart of western Victoria also presented an opportunity to establish a regional hub.

“It really needs a full review and Karkana could well and truly play a role,” she said.

“It’s one thing to talk about improving mental-health services, it’s another to actually do it and make a difference.”

Ms Kealy said a pressing need in the Wimmera was to gain the services of more mental-health workers.

“Staffing uncertainty to address mental-health issues is the biggest challenge we have in this area,” she said.

“Every mental-health worker across the state is fatigued.

“The past two years have been overwhelming.

“We need to do an enormous amount of work to recruit and train mentalhealth workers to meet Royal Commission recommendations.

“For a Karkana project to work it requires a specialist approach and guaranteed resources.

“A dedicated centre that provides immediate relief and respite could well be the crucial piece in this puzzle.

“A key would be first to establish whether it could be home to a project that ticked as many boxes as possible in addressing need.”