Older persons mental health service workshops
June 2017
Adelaide’s Southern Older Persons Mental Health Service has seen a recent increase in the number of clients presenting with AOD problems, with alcohol being the predominant drug of concern.
Building on its ongoing program of assisting specialist and generalist health and welfare workers to better prevent, assess and respond to the needs of older people experiencing AOD-related harm, NCETA is conducting a series of in-service training workshops for staff in the Southern Older Persons Mental Health Service.
The interactive face-to-face workshops use an evidence-based approach to:
- Provide an overview for mental health and allied health professionals about AOD issues affecting older people
- Describe the range of assessment and screening tools that can be used by mental health and allied health professionals
- Identify service access issues for both older people and service providers
- The range of AOD interventions (and intervention settings) that are appropriate for working with older people.
In addition, NCETA is providing participants attending the workshops with copies of its resources including:
- Grey Matters: Preventing and responding to alcohol and other drug problems among older Australians Information Sheets
- Preventing and reducing alcohol- and other drug-related harm among older people: A practical guide for health and welfare professionals
To date, the feedback from the workshops has been extremely positive. Examples of the feedback include:
- The workshop this morning was great!! All staff should have access to this information.
- Your presentation was extremely well received and staff were talking about it for days after.
- Thanks once again for a great presentation and workshop.
