Towards Wellness
Metropolitan AdelaideMental Health & Suicide Prevention Plan 2026 – 2031
Acknowledgements
Acknowledgement of Country
We acknowledge the Kaurna peoples who are the traditional Custodians of the Adelaide Plains. We pay tribute to their physical and spiritual connection to land, waters and community, enduring now as it has been throughout time. We pay respect to them, their culture, and to Elders past and present. We would also like to acknowledge and pay our respects to those Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people from other Nations who live, work, travel, and contribute on Kaurna Country.
Recognition of people with Lived and Living Experience
We acknowledge the individual and collective contributions of those with a lived and living experience of mental health concerns and suicide, and those who love, have loved, and care for them. Each person’s journey is unique, and is a valued contribution to Australia’s commitment to mental health and suicide prevention systems reform.
We thank those with lived and living experience who contribute their insights to help shape a more person-centred, inclusive, and responsive system.
Foreword
The Towards Wellness Joint Regional Mental Health and Suicide Prevention Plan 2026 - 2031 (TWP) builds on the foundational Towards Wellness Plan 2020-20251 and the reviewed and enhanced Towards Wellness Plan 2023-20252. The Towards Wellness Plan represents a significant milestone in the shared commitment between the Adelaide Primary Health Network (Adelaide PHN), the South Australian Government Department for Health and Wellbeing (DHW), and the metropolitan Adelaide Local Health Networks (LHNs) to improve mental health and wellbeing outcomes, reduce suicide rates, enhance system quality, and improve sustainability through collaboration across the metropolitan Adelaide region.
The Towards Wellness Plan reflects our shared determination to ensure that all people living in metropolitan Adelaide can access effective, coordinated, and integrated mental health and suicide prevention services. This reaffirms our joint vision of a connected mental health system that consistently delivers high-quality, equitable care.
Adelaide PHN, the Department for Health and Wellbeing, and the metropolitan Adelaide LHNs along with key stakeholders, continue to strengthen a longstanding partnership that is essential to improving mental health and wellbeing across our region. We recognise the increasing complexity of mental health needs in our community and the importance of a unified approach to address these challenges. Our organisations commit to working collaboratively to strengthen system integration, reduce fragmentation, and enhance the availability, accessibility and continuity of mental health care across primary, community, and acute settings.
Our partnership is grounded in strong relationships, a history of joint system reform initiatives, and a shared metropolitan footprint. By working together on regional planning, commissioning, and service development, we aim to deliver person-centred, recovery oriented, culturally safe and evidence informed mental health services that focus on early intervention, improved care coordination, and seamless transitions across service tiers.
Professor Michelle McKay Adelaide Primary Health Network CEO
Robyn Lawrence SA Health CEO
Introduction
The Towards Wellness Plan 2026 – 2031 (TWP) takes a shared system-wide approach to improving the mental health and wellbeing outcomes of the community living in metropolitan Adelaide.
Our purpose is to create a connected, culturally safe, accessible and equitable system of care to improve mental health and wellbeing across the Adelaide region.
Our shared vision is achieving equitable, high-quality care across metropolitan Adelaide.
Whilst the TWP is jointly owned by Adelaide PHN and the metropolitan Adelaide LHNs, its objectives will be delivered collaboratively with key sector partners across primary care, community organisations, and commissioned service providers.
Our joint commitment is to work together to achieve the outcomes outlined within this plan.
The TWP provides a high-level framework that will guide development of joint, detailed action plans, to deliver on the TWP’s key objectives.
Our guiding principles are:
• Shared accountability
• Collaborative approach
• Embed lived experience at all stages
• Equity and access
• Effective Governance
Strategic Context
The Towards Wellness Plan (the TWP) forms part of the shared commitment between the Commonwealth and South Australian Governments to deliver on the objectives of the National Mental Health and Suicide Prevention Plan (the National Plan)3, being to:
• Improve the mental health of all Australians
• Reduce the rates of suicide
• Ensure the sustainability of mental health and suicide prevention services
• Improve the overall mental health system within Australia
Informed by local voices and shaped by community needs, the TWP has been developed in partnership between the Adelaide PHN, the Department for Health and Wellbeing (DHW), and the metropolitan Adelaide LHNs using a place-based approach.
The TWP aims to:
Act as a guide to support the delivery of the National Plan on mental health and suicide prevention
Inform effective service planning, design, and delivery
Strengthen planning and commissioning partnerships across the metropolitan Adelaide region
Identify shared priority areas
Address service and system gaps
Promote evidence-informed decision making
Enhance integration across State and Commonwealth-funded services, including tertiary, secondary, and primary care
The TWP will not:
Be used as a detailed Implementation Plan
Replace existing local, state, and national strategies and frameworks
Replicate already established mental health and suicide prevention initiatives
Immediately resolve all service and system challenges
Conflict with current evidence-based approaches
Operate independently of broader strategic efforts
Adelaide PHN, DHW, and the metropolitan Adelaide LHNs reaffirm their shared commitment to collaborative regional planning and to work towards an integrated, accessible, and holistic mental health system which meets the individual needs of people it serves.
National Principles for Regional Planning and Commissioning of Mental Health and Suicide Prevention Services4
Working Together
Strong Partnerships & Governance
• Working in meaningful partnership with key stakeholders and ensuring that engagement is based on shared commitment to respect, trust, care, compassion and dignity.
• Robust and clear governance structures between PHNs and state and territory representatives, ensuring inclusion of people with lived experience, carers and families, and community and sector representatives.
Collaboration & Communication
• Working both within and outside the health system to address local social determinants of illhealth for individuals engaging with the Stepped Care structures of mental health.
• This should include effective collaboration and inclusive processes between commissioning bodies, service providers, people with lived experience, communities, and other stakeholders.
Culturally Safe, Inclusive & Responsive
• Providing an inclusive culture for people of all backgrounds, including fostering genuine partnerships with, and commissioning opportunities for, Aboriginal CommunityControlled Organisations, other Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander leaders and communities, as well as those of culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds to promote enduring capability and local control and decision-making.
• Ensuring the voices of LGBTIQA+ people and those with lived experience in mental ill-health are included.
Defining Needs Delivery & Accountability
Detailed Needs Analysis
• Ensuring needs are identified for local population demographics to determine health and wellbeing needs across the lifespan, as well as identifying issues faced by vulnerable groups.
• Ensuring detailed needs analysis informs commissioning decisions by using the best available data, research and evidence, including community-led and practice-based methodology, data analytics, and tools such as the National Mental Health Service Planning Framework.
Service & Workforce Mapping
• Supporting services across the Stepped Care model while minimising service gaps in local areas and reducing duplication of services. Ensuring that planning and needs analysis incorporates workforce mapping to attract and retain a specialist and peer workforce.
• Defining workforce competencies to ensure individuals have adequate and appropriate training to work within their professional scope of practice.
Evidence-Based Services
• Using the best combination of evidence-based services to design and deliver across the Stepped Care model.
• Flexibility to determine innovative services or supports to best respond to local conditions and meet local needs.
Service Integration
• Designing mechanisms for integrated service delivery that supports the principles of vertical integration and ensures a clear pathway for clients to access different levels of service, including support for multiple needs.
• Ensuring horizontal integration and joined-up delivery models are in place to reduce fragmentation and promote information and data sharing.
Person-centred, Place-based
• Placing the consumer and diverse community needs at the centre of how systems and services are developed and delivered.
• Ensuring that services reflect the unique needs, circumstances, context, and aspirations of each community, how needs differ by cohort and place.
Monitoring & Reporting
• Undertaking ongoing reporting and monitoring, with mechanisms to track local priorities and actions.
• Developing tools/processes designed to measure meaningful outcomes and change and that consider the Framework for Governance of Indigenous Data.
• Ensuring there are ongoing evaluation and monitoring opportunities for continuous innovation and improvement.
Building on the Foundations of the Towards Wellness Plan 2020-2025
The TWP builds on the learnings and achievements of the foundational Towards Wellness Plan 2020-20251
Key Achievements include
Co-commissioned the Safe Haven in Northern Adelaide.
Co-commissioned Alt2Sui (Alternatives to Suicide) peer groups, led by the Lived Experience Leadership & Advocacy Network (LELAN).
Established the Northern Adelaide Medicare Mental Health Centre.
Co-created the Philosophy of Care led by LELAN and The Australian Centre for Social Innovation (TACSI), underpinning service delivery within Medicare Mental Health Centres and Safe Haven.
Implemented The Way Back Support Service with funding for Hospital Liaison Positions in the Central Adelaide Local Health Network (CALHN), later extending to the Northern and Southern Adelaide Local Health Network (NALHN & SALHN) as part of the Universal Aftercare Service.
Enhanced funding for headspace to provide additional support for young people.
Established three new suicide prevention Collaboratives in Northern, Central, and Southern Adelaide, strengthening cross-sector partnerships to reduce suicide and suicide-related distress.
Provided Connecting with People training to primary mental healthcare and AOD staff.
Launched the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social and Emotional Wellbeing Centre.
Opened the South Australian Kids Hub, providing mental health and wellbeing support to children 0-12 and their families.
Collaborated to roll out the Initial Assessment & Referral (IAR) Tool across metropolitan Adelaide’s Community Mental Health Teams.
Supported progress to integrate the Medicare Mental Health Phone Service and State Mental Health Triage lines.
Policy and Planning Environment
The TWP is shaped by National, State and Local Policy. The table below provides an overview of key documents that influence this plan.
Mental Health
Vision 2030: Blueprint for Mental Health and Suicide Prevention
Fifth National Mental Health and Suicide Prevention Plan
Equally Well: Quality of Life – Equality in Life, National Mental Health Commission (NMHC 2020)
National Framework for Social and Emotional Wellbeing
National Mental Health and Suicide Prevention Agreement
National Agreement on Closing the Gap
National Children’s Mental Health and Wellbeing Strategy Bilateral Schedule on Mental Health and Suicide Prevention (South Australia) (DOH 2022)
National Mental Health and Suicide Prevention Agreement and Bilateral PHN Program, (DOH 2021)
Suicide Prevention
Head to Health Commonwealth Guidance (DOH 2021)
National Mental Health Commission - The National Lived Experience (Peer) Workforce Development Guidelines
The Lived Experience Governance Framework (LELAN 2023)
National Mental Health Workforce Strategy 2022 - 32
Multicultural Mental Health Framework Australia
National Framework for RecoveryOrientated Mental Health Services
Mental Health Australia Strategy 2024 - 29
Model of Care Aboriginal Mental Health and Wellbeing Centre – Coordinated mental health care and support for First Nation People in South Australia Draft – Version 8 (SA Health 2023)
Mental Health Services Plan 2020-2025
Adelaide PHN Needs Assessment, 2022-23 to 2024-25 (Adelaide PHN 2023)
Adelaide PHN’s 202326 Strategic Plan (Adelaide PHN 2023)
National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Suicide Prevention Strategy 2025 – 35
National Suicide Prevention Strategy 2025 – 2035 Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide 2024
SA Health - A Co-Created Philosophy of Care, Version 2 2023
South Australian Suicide Prevention Plan 2023 – 26 (SA Gov 2023)
Adelaide PHN Access and Equity Framework (Adelaide PHN 2024) WCHN Community Services Strategic Plan, 202226 (SA Gov 2022) NALHN Strategic Plan
2020-25 (SA Health 2020)
CALHN Community Mental Health Services Plan (SA Health 2022)
CALHN’s Clinical Strategy (20232028)
SALHN Strategic Plan 2023-27 (SA Health 2023)
Overview of our Region5,6
Stretching from Angle Vale in the North to Sellicks Hill in the South, the Adelaide Primary Health Network (Adelaide PHN) works to improve and deliver better health outcomes for over 1.2 million people living across Kaurna land. One of two PHNs in South Australia and covering 1,553km2, Adelaide PHN includes the metropolitan Adelaide LHNs of Northern Adelaide Local Health Network (NALHN), Central Adelaide Local Health Network (CALHN), Southern Adelaide Local Health Network (SALHN), and shares the statewide Women’s and Children’s Health Network with Country SA PHN.
Womens and Children’s Health Network (WCHN) - providing Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services across metropolitan and regional South Australia.
LHN Snapshots6
Northern Adelaide Local health Network (NALHN) provides acute and community services to the northern metropolitan region. NALHN’s major hospitals include the Lyell McEwin and Modbury Hospitals
Central Adelaide Local Health Network (CALHN) provides acute and community services to the central metropolitan region in Adelaide. CALHN’s major hospitals include the Royal Adelaide and Queen Elizabeth, as well as acute mental health services located at Glenside Campus.
Southern Adelaide Local Health Network (SALHN) provides acute and community services to the southern metropolitan region in Adelaide. SALHN’s major hospitals include Flinders Medical Centre and Noarlunga Hospital.
The Women’s and Children’s Health Network (WCHN) provides specialist health care for women, children, and young people, including child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS) across metropolitan Adelaide and regional South Australia. WCHN
Our Mental Health and Wellbeing
Insights
from the Adelaide PHN 2025-26 to 2027-28 Needs Assessment6,7
In 2022, approximately 15 out of every 100 people aged over 18 living in metropolitan Adelaide (approximately 150,979 people), were estimated to have high or very high levels of psychological distress.
The three Local Government Areas with the highest rates of high or very high psychological distress were:
Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander People
In 2018-19 an estimated 61% of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander South Australian adults reported ‘low’ or ‘moderate’ levels of psychological distress.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people reported ‘high’ or ‘very high’ levels of psychological distress at a rate 2.3 times higher than non-Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander South Australians, based on age standardised rates.
Mental health condition was the most prevalent long-term health condition in the Adelaide PHN, and across the metropolitan Adelaide LHNs in the 2021 Australian Census.
Children & Young People
In 2021-22 approximately 41,000 children and young people aged 0-17 in metropolitan Adelaide required treatment for mental health concerns.
People Experiencing Homelessness
Mental health concerns impact 48% of people experiencing homelessness.
People from Culturally & Linguistically Diverse (CALD) Backgrounds
Refugees, asylum seekers and older CALD people are at a greater risk of developing mental health concerns than the general Australian population.
LGBTIQA+ Communities
In South Australia, high or very high levels of psychological distress were reported by:
Moderately severe or severe levels of generalised anxiety symptoms were reported by:
Older People (65+)
7.9% of men and 11.1% of women aged 65 years and older have experienced a mental health condition (excluding dementia)8
Suicide Prevention
In the Adelaide PHN region, 785 people passed away due to suicide between 2018 and 2022.
The highest rate of suicidal behaviour is in young people aged 12 to 17 years with a major depressive disorder.
People aged 30-59 years accounted for 53% of all deaths by suicide.
Men are 3 to 4 times more likely to die by suicide than women, with the highest rates among middle-aged and older men.
76.6% of adult LGBTIQA+ South Australians have experienced suicidal thoughts in their lifetimes, and 35% have attempted suicide.
People living with a disability died by suicide at a 3 times higher rate than the general population.
Among LGBTIQA+ people living with a disability or severe limitations, 90.9% reported having suicidal thoughts in their lifetimes and 50.1% had attempted suicide.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are nearly twice as likely to die by suicide than non-indigenous South Australians.
Between 2017 and 2022, Australian Defence Force veterans faced a 26% higher rate of suicide than the general Australian population.
Priority Populations
The TWP seeks to improve the mental health and wellbeing outcomes of everyone living in the metropolitan Adelaide region. To achieve this, it must meet the needs of the most vulnerable and underserved in the community.
Some community members face a higher risk of experiencing mental ill health and suicidality, due to the impacts of social, economic, and environmental challenges. A lack of available supports that are both appropriate and accessible compounds these challenges, increasing the vulnerability of these populations. As a result, priority population groups have been identified as:
• People who are at risk of suicide and/or who have recently attempted suicide.
• Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
• Children, young people, and their families, including women in the perinatal period.
• People from CALD communities, particularly refugees, asylum seekers, and older people.
• People who identify as belonging to LGBTIQA+ communities.
• People with severe mental health conditions requiring psychosocial support and crossgovernment coordinated care.
• People with alcohol and other drug comorbidities.
• People with physical health comorbidities.
• People experiencing homelessness or transient housing who have a mental health condition.
• Older people experiencing mental health challenges.
An intersectional lens is required when planning for the metropolitan Adelaide region, which recognises the complex identities and lived experience of the community. People may identify across multiple priority population groups, and face a unique, overlapping, and compounded experience of social disadvantage.
What we heard
Development of the Towards Wellness Plan has been informed by comprehensive consultation, which included targeted engagement with key stakeholders, input from steering committee members, and feedback gathered through the YourSAy community survey8. Additional insights were drawn from broader stakeholder engagement undertaken as part of the Adelaide PHN Needs Assessment 2025-26 to 2027-285, ensuring the TWP reflects current system pressures, emerging needs, and community priorities across the metropolitan Adelaide region.
YourSAy Community Survey8
We received 67 replies and 3 written submissions to the YourSAy survey, with people reporting that:
80.6% were members of the community.
19.4% were from a local organisation (people also took part on behalf of an organisation they work for).
73.1% had accessed a mental health service.
61.2% had someone they care about access a mental health service.
71.6% knew that they, or someone they care about, would see their GP for mental health support.
43.3% knew that they, or someone they care about, would see a private mental health service.
37.3% knew that they, or someone they care about, would see a hospital emergency department.
over 77% would feel that their care was more streamlined and connected if they did not have to repeat information when referred to a new service, or when receiving multiple services at once.
Respondents identified the 5 main barriers to accessing (or providing) mental health care in their local communities were:
• Long waiting times for appointments: 82.1%
• Limited availability of services: 74.6%
• Cost: 67.2%
• Not knowing what supports are available or where to go: 64.2%
• Having to go to a GP first and the system being difficult to navigate: 49.3%
Importantly, ongoing co-design and co-production is planned for the development and implementation of priority action plans flowing from the TWP. Collaboration will be informed by a place-based approach, to enhance the mental health and wellbeing of people living across the metropolitan Adelaide region. Engagement will continue with partners across the health sectors, including primary care; people with lived and living experience of mental health challenges; culturally and linguistically diverse communities; and population groups disproportionately affected by mental ill-health and suicide.
Support navigation Address stigma and bias
Insights from consultation
Based on community feedback, key priorities for the Towards Wellness Plan were identified as:
• Addressing barriers to service access and equity of care, including availability, affordability, flexible opening hours, and culturally safe and appropriate services.
• Enhancing service integration and streamlining care pathways to minimise challenges in navigating the current system.
• Increasing access to preventive early intervention responses and supports.
• Improving data and information sharing to enhance the experience of care, and to enable a shared response to mental health and suicide prevention service delivery.
• Strengthening workforce capability and capacity, including an increased focus on lived experience to ensure the workforce is well equipped and sustainable.
Plan on a Page
The process of high-level strategy becoming local action is mapped below. Strategic direction is set by the National Plan9, then developed into an operational plan for South Australia. The priority areas, objectives, and strategies identified within the TWP will then be implemented through local action plans and other development opportunities.
National Mental Health and Suicide Prevention Plan
Access to Culturally Appropriate & Equitable Care
Specialist service access to address health inequities for identified underserved and vulnerable populations and groups.
Improving Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander social and emotional wellbeing through increased access to culturally appropriate and safe mental health and suicide prevention services.
Person-Centred & Responsive Holistic Care
Accessible & Inclusive Early Intervention
Access to holistic care and treatment for adults with mental illness and complex mental health conditions.
Community led approaches to coordinated suicide prevention.
Promotion and increased utilisation of digital approaches to early intervention.
Expansion and integration of services for children, young people and their families experiencing mental health and wellbeing concerns.
Strengthening Partnerships & Integration
Workforce Sustainability & Development
Shared governance and leadership to strengthen joint regional planning and commissioning.
Integrating services across sectors to ensure smooth transitions between different care levels, reducing fragmentation.
Capacity building and improved community and workforce capability to support people experiencing mental health conditions and suicide distress.
Continuous investment in workforce training and development to meet increasing demand.
Bilateral Agreement Initiatives - LHN Action PlansWorkforce Development – Service Development Opportunities
Priority Areas for Collaboration
1. Access to Culturally Appropriate and Equitable Care
What
we heard
People need timely access to safe, appropriate, and affordable care.
Objective Strategies
1.1 Ensure equitable access to culturally respectful, needs based services for all people seeking mental health and suicide prevention support.
• Embed equity as a core service planning and commissioning principle through structured engagement with priority community groups, in the co-design of services and within co-commissioning opportunities.
• Implement trauma-informed, culturally responsive care standards across commissioning, service design, and performance monitoring.
• Embed culturally appropriate tools across all levels of care, including primary, secondary, and tertiary mental health services.
• Collaborate with CALD and Aboriginal communities to achieve equitable health outcomes through a co-designed framework.
• Strengthen workforce capability through embedding Aboriginal and CALD perspectives, cultural safety, and equitable practice across mental health training and service delivery.
• Tailor Suicide Prevention training for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Communities, with governance and delivery guided by the communities they serve through co-design and production.
• Incorporate lived experience co-designed models addressing social, cultural, and structural determinants into commissioning processes.
1.2 Incorporate Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspectives on health, healing, and wellbeing within service planning, design, and delivery.
• Embed the Social and Emotional Wellbeing Framework within planning, commissioning, and evaluation processes.
• Ensure Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander governance within service commissioning leadership structures.
• Partner with ACCHOs and Aboriginal organisations to understand and meet community need within service planning and commissioning.
• Explore regionally coordinated, evidence informed initiatives that speak to diverse cultural understandings of distress, healing, and help seeking.
• Embed an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander workforce into service model development.
1. Access to Culturally Appropriate and Equitable Care continued...
Objective Strategies
1.3 Ensure services are welcoming and culturally safe for everyone.
1.4 Reduce stigma and normalise help seeking behaviour.
• Co-design of service environments, pathways and resources with local communities to ensure cultural safety.
• Ensure the workforce is equipped to overcome structural, practical, and other barriers to providing care, including access to interpreters and other culturally appropriate tools.
• Acknowledge and address discrimination and exclusion that exists within service systems through participatory approaches enshrining equity, inclusion, and a rights-based approach into policy, commissioning, and service delivery.
• Address stigma related to mental health, wellbeing, and suicide prevention through service culture, communication standards, and clear language expectations when commissioning a service.
• Normalise everyday conversations about mental health and wellbeing by providing education and supporting community, workplace, and service -level initiatives which reduce hesitancy, and increase early help seeking behaviour.
• Embed lived experience into the leadership, design, and delivery of stigmareduction and mental health education campaigns.
2. Person-Centred and Responsive Holistic Care
What we heard
The current system is difficult to navigate, and people need access to safe, streamlined, and appropriate supports at the right time and place.
There is a lack of holistic and integrated mental health and AOD treatment services.
Objective Strategies
2.1 Ensure access to holistic, personcentred care to maximise outcomes for people seeking Mental Health support.
2.2 Expand access to a range of communityled suicide prevention approaches.
• Seek opportunities to work with a range of services to develop holistic and integrated care plans.
• Work collaboratively across PHN commissioned, state funded, and communitybased services to develop care plans that support trauma-informed transitions across the system enabled by interoperable shared care records.
• Improve continuity of care across service transitions and systems, with clear follow up and handover processes.
• Identify opportunities to support the sustainability of suicide prevention collaboratives, networks and community led responses across the region.
• Embed postvention pathways within health, education, first responders, and community organisations to ensure people affected by suicide are identified early and supported to connect with care.
• Strengthen workforce capability to respond compassionately and safely to bereavement by suicide, including trauma-informed practice and local cultural considerations (e.g., Aboriginal community protocols).
• Expand universal aftercare models.
2.3 Strengthen system consistency, quality and shared practice through statewide and regional guidelines.
2.4 Enable flexible and needs based responses to people experiencing distress, suicidal ideation or heightened risk.
• Finalise and implement SA Statewide Collaborative Guidelines across PHN and state-funded services.
• Establish mechanisms for monitoring implementation, shared learning, and continuous quality improvement which include participatory approaches with people with lived experience.
• Strengthen access to rapid, community-based, trauma-informed assessment and support options, including alternatives to emergency departments where appropriate.
• Ensure regional consistency and clarity in crisis pathways, including roles of acute, community, primary care and suicide prevention services.
• Embed co-design principles based on locally identified needs, within the cocommissioning of mental health and suicide prevention services.
2.5 Ensure care is informed by lived experience and responsive to consumer, carer and community feedback.
• Embed consumer and carer lived experience roles in regional planning, service design, evaluation, and improvement activities.
• Embed peer-led approaches which enhance engagement, continuity of care and recovery outcomes.
3. Accessible and Inclusive Early Intervention
What we heard
Increase awareness and access to early intervention supports and preventive care.
Objective Strategies
3.1 Ensure people are connected early to appropriate and accessible supports that meet their needs.
3.2 Increase community awareness, understanding, and capability to recognise distress and respond.
3.3 Strengthen health literacy and confidence to access early mental health and wellbeing supports.
• Promote increased awareness and utilisation of evidence-informed digital and low intensity approaches for early intervention.
• Strengthen referral pathways between community, primary care, digital, and specialist services to support timely step-up or step-down based on changing need.
• Prioritise early intervention approaches for populations at increased risk of mental ill-health or suicide, including Aboriginal peoples, CALD communities, LGBTIQA+ people, young people, older people, people living with a disability, and people experiencing social disadvantage.
• Strengthen pathways to non-clinical, lived experience-led and peer supported settings, recognising safe, relational, and community-based responses.
• Develop clear, accessible referral pathways that support families to navigate the system, including community-based options.
• Implement regionally coordinated community awareness initiatives such as Start the Chat which encourage help-seeking behaviour.
• Support delivery of evidence-based mental health and suicide prevention literacy programs across sectors including schools, workplaces, and community settings.
• Collaborate across sectors to strengthen the capability of the mental health workforce and community leaders, promoting wellbeing and guiding people towards appropriate early supports.
• Strengthen and promote community-based programs to raise awareness and understanding of mental health and suicide prevention.
• Develop and disseminate clear, accessible, and culturally appropriate information about services, eligibility, and how to seek help.
• Partner with community organisations to reach people who may be less likely to engage with formal services.
3.4 Simplify mental health service navigation.
• Co-design service pathways to improve the experience of people seeking support.
• Improve visibility and the alignment of early intervention entry points, across both PHN-commissioned and state-funded services.
• Support the use of navigation, triage, and warm-referral approaches to reduce fragmentation and repeated storytelling.
• Promote navigation pathways that are inclusive of digital, community-based, and culturally specific services.
4. Strengthening Partnerships and Integration
What we heard
Stronger data and information sharing processes can improve the experience of mental health and suicide prevention services, by supporting a shared response and person-centred care.
Objective Strategies
4.1 Strengthen system stewardship, integrated governance, partnerships, and co-design to enable a coordinated mental health and suicide prevention response.
4.2 Embed integrated service models to improve the experience of care.
4.3 Enhance data and information sharing to support service coordination, while ensuring the safe, ethical use of personal information.
4.4 Ensure information sharing practices are transparent, person-centred, and inclusive, with clear communication to consumers and carers.
• Identify and progress opportunities for joint planning and co-commissioning to address regional gaps, avoid duplication, and strengthen integrated service responses.
• Embed collaborative governance arrangements across PHN and state commissioned services, to support shared responsibility for integration.
• Embed co-design and co-production approaches across regional planning, commissioning and service improvement activities, ensuring meaningful involvement of people with lived experience, carers, and communities.
• Support cross-sector partnerships with primary care, education, housing, justice, child protection, peak bodies and social services to address the broader determinants of mental health and suicide risk.
• Strengthen formal mechanisms such as communities of practice to support ongoing relationship-building, shared learning, and joint problem-solving activities.
• Co-create integrated care pathways which include key transition points, such as youth to adult services.
• Leverage existing and emerging opportunities to establish effective shared care planning across mental health, suicide prevention, and broader community and welfare system.
• Ensure lived experience co-designed integrated models which reflect person-centred, trauma-informed, and culturally safe practice.
• Improve integration and interoperable referral pathways between general practice, primary mental health services, community supports, and tertiary mental health care to enable proactive follow up, continuity of care and stepped responses based on need.
• Leverage opportunities to improve care coordination, planning, and responsiveness, by establishing robust data and information sharing agreements and interoperability within current and planned co-commissioned services.
• Prioritise opportunities to utilise existing and emerging tools to support care coordination between services.
• Use shared data and information to support system planning, responsiveness and continuous improvement, including understanding service gaps and population needs.
• Establish shared measures of integration, care experience and outcomes to support joint PHN - DHW accountability.
• Prioritise lived-experience participatory feedback and service data to identify integration issues and drive improvement.
• Embed learning from pilots, innovations, and evaluations into regional planning and future commissioning.
5. Workforce Sustainability and Development
What
we heard
Strengthen the capability and capacity of the workforce including an increased focus on lived experience to ensure it is sustainable and well equipped.
Objective Strategies
5.1 Strengthen and sustain a skilled, diverse, culturally responsive and representative mental health and suicide prevention workforce.
• Work in partnership with PHN commissioned providers, LHN’s, Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisations, peak bodies and community-based services to conduct workforce strategic planning and identify key capability requirements across the sector.
• Invest in workforce planning, recruitment, and retention strategies that strengthen capacity across primary care, community, and specialist services.
• Support targeted workforce development and training across the full continuum, including prevention, early intervention, suicide prevention, acute care, and recovery-oriented services.
• Embed training in trauma-informed and culturally safe practices as a foundational skillset for the whole mental health workforce.
• Establish and maintain communities of practice to build understanding, share learnings, and explore opportunities for innovation.
• Promote uptake of education such as Connecting with People training for the mental health workforce to support consistent, compassionate, and evidence informed responses to suicide risk.
• Support joint training, secondary consultation, and cross-sector learning between mental health, suicide prevention, primary care, and community services.
5.2 Lived experience embedded across the system.
• Co-design services, training, and models to ensure people with lived experience are meaningfully employed, supported, and retained across the mental health system and its governance structures.
• Continue to embed the SA Philosophy of Care and the Child and Families Philosophy of Care across the sector with explicit alignment to lived experience principles.
• Embed structured training, supervision and career pathways for lived-experience workers, ensuring safe, supported and valued participation.
5. Workforce Sustainability and Development continued...
Objective Strategies
5.3 Strengthen the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander workforce capacity.
5.4 Support mental health and suicide prevention workforce wellbeing, safety and sustainability.
• Partner with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander organisations and communities to grow the Aboriginal mental health, and social and emotional wellbeing workforce. This includes cultural, clinical, peer, and community roles.
• Embed culturally safe principles across service and system design to ensure workplaces support the retention, wellbeing, and leadership progression of their Aboriginal workforce.
• Promote cultural safety and fostering community relationships as a shared responsibility within services, and not an expectation of Aboriginal staff.
• Embed practices across PHN and state commissioned services that support workforce wellbeing, psychological safety, and manageable workloads, particularly for suicide prevention and crisis-facing roles.
• Support access to high-quality clinical, peer and cultural supervision, reflective practice, and peer support.
• Encourage flexible workforce models and role design which support sustainability and career longevity.
• Use workforce data and feedback to understand workforce sustainability risks, identify solutions, and build into strategic service planning.
Turning Priorities into Action
The Towards Wellness Plan 2026–2031 (TWP) articulates a shared metropolitan vision for equitable, high-quality mental health care, delivered through coordinated, sustainable system reforms across SA Health, PHNs, and partner agencies. Realising this vision requires a mature, ongoing implementation approach that embeds accountability, transparency, and continuous improvement.
Progress across the TWP’s shared priorities will be enabled by a cycle of planning, delivery, monitoring, and review. This approach has been endorsed in principle by the steering committee, and allows the implementation of the TWP to adapt and align with emerging evidence, population trends, and evolving system performance. Co-commissioning will continue where it enhances and promotes better integration of State and Commonwealth priorities.
A joint implementation steering committee will be established, with representatives from Adelaide PHN, DHW, metropolitan Adelaide LHNs, lived experience, and other key stakeholders to support the implementation and development of action plans relating to priority areas.
The Steering Committee will report on progress via Action Plan Updates to respective executives and the Collaborative Agreement Steering Groups (CASGs), attended by senior representatives of the Adelaide PHN and metropolitan Adelaide LHN representatives. The objective of the CASGs is to assist the implementation, and ongoing key objectives, of Collaboration Agreements between the Adelaide PHN and the metropolitan Adelaide LHNs. To achieve both national and state health strategies and policy objectives, the CASG supports the Adelaide PHN and metropolitan Adelaide LHNs to adopt a shared and coordinated approach in addressing the health needs of the local population.
Our Roadmap to Success
The successful implementation of the TWP involves:
Effective shared governance and partnership arrangements
Performance management
• Building a culture of collaboration with lived experience as a central component.
• Establishing implementation groups to drive activity in line with identified priorities, composed of relevant stakeholders and people with lived experience.
• Committing to joint planning to initiate specific activities, timelines, and responsibilities to achieve desired outcomes in line with identified priorities.
• Identifying key performance indicators (KPI’s) to track progress and ensure accountability.
• Taking a shared approach to monitoring and evaluation using established national frameworks, such as the National Mental Health and Suicide Prevention Evaluation Framework and Sharing Guidelines10
Communication and reporting
• Maintaining regular communication on the progress of TWP priorities, and the achievement of its objectives to support their visibility, implementation, and wider understanding.
• Providing consistent reports to key stakeholders.
Glossary
ACCHO
Aboriginal Community-Controlled Health Organisation
APHN / Adelaide PHN
Adelaide Primary Health Network
CALD
Culturally and Linguistically Diverse
CALHN
Central Adelaide Local Health Network
DHW
Department for Health and Wellbeing
GP
General Practitioner
LGBTIQA+
Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Intersex, Queer, Asexual, and other sexually or gender diverse people
LHN
Local Health Network
Metropolitan Adelaide LHNs
The Northern, Central, and Southern Adelaide Local Health Networks.
NALHN
Northern Adelaide Local Health Network
PHN
Primary Health Network
SALHN
South Australian Local Health Network
WCHN
Women’s and Children’s Health Network
References
(1) Adelaide Primary Health Network. (2020). Towards Wellness Plan 2020-2025. Adelaide, South Australia. Retrieved from https://adelaidephn.com.au/documents/Towards-Wellness-Plan-2020-2025.pdf
(2) Adelaide Primary Health Network. (2023). Towards Wellness: Adelaide Metropolitan Integrated Mental Health and Suicide Prevention Plan. Adelaide, South Australia. Retrieved from https://adelaidephn.com. au/assets/resource-library/Adelaide-PHN-Towards-Wellness-Plan-2023-2025.pdf
(3) Commonwealth of Australia. (2022). The National Mental Health and Suicide Prevention Agreement Retrieved from Federal Financial Relations: https://federalfinancialrelations.gov.au/agreements/mentalhealth-suicide-prevention-agreement
(4) Integrated Regional Planning Working Group. (2018). Joint Regional Planning for Integrated Mental Health and Suicide Prevention Services, A Guide for Local Health Networks (LHNs) and Primary Health Networks (PHNs). Canberra, Australian Capital Territory: Department of Health, Disability and Ageing, Commonwealth of Australia. Retrieved from https://www.health.gov.au/sites/default/files/ documents/2020/11/joint-regional-planning-for-integrated-mental-health-and-suicide-preventionservices_0.pdf
(5) Trade and Investment. (2024, January). Population Projections by Statistical Area Level 2 (SA2), 20212041. Adelaide, South Australia: Department of State Development. Retrieved January 2026, from https:// plan.sa.gov.au/__data/assets/excel_doc/0007/1344895/Population-projections-by-statistical-arealevel-2-2021-2041-medium-series.xlsx
(6) Australian Bureau of Statistics. (2021). Region Summary: South Australia. Retrieved January 2026, from Data by Region: https://dbr.abs.gov.au/region.html?lyr=ste&rgn=4
(7) Adelaide Primary Health Network. (2024). Adelaide PHN Needs Assessment Report 2025-26 to 202728. Adelaide, South Australia: Adelaide Primary Health Network. Retrieved from https://adelaidephn. com.au/documents/Needs-Assessments/Needs-Assessment-Report-2025-2026-to-2027-2028-FullReport-Dec-2025.pdf
(8) Adelaide Primary Health Network, Department for Health and Wellbeing. (2025). Mental Health and Suicide Prevention Joint Regional Plan (Adelaide region). Retrieved January 2026, from YourSAy: https:// yoursay.sa.gov.au/mental-health-and-suicide-prevention-joint-regional-plan-adelaide-region
(9) Department of Health, Disability and Ageing, Commonwealth of Australia. (2017). The Fifth National Mental Health and Suicide Prevention Plan. Canberra, Australian Capital Territory: National Mental Health Commission. Retrieved December 2025, from https://www.mentalhealthcommission.gov.au/sites/ default/files/2024-03/the-fifth-national-mental-health-and-suicide-prevention-plan-2017.pdf
(10) ARTD Consultants. (2024). National Mental Health and Suicide Prevention Evaluation Sharing Guidelines. Canberra, Australian Capital Territory: Department of Health, Disability and Ageing, Commonwealth of Australia. Retrieved January 2026, from https://www.health.gov.au/sites/default/ files/2025-02/national-mental-health-and-suicide-prevention-evaluation-sharing-guidelines.pdf
