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Professor leads national suicide prevention strategy revision
University of the Sunshine Coast Adjunct Professor Peter Bycroft is leading a consortium which this week won a $600,000 contract from the Commonwealth Department of Health and Ageing to revise the country’s "Living is for Everyone" framework.
Professor Bycroft said his team of mostly Sunshine Coast organisations and academics would spend the next six to eight months working to provide the government with a "definitive blueprint for suicide prevention".
"This will be the national policy framework for the prevention, intervention and post-vention (bereavement counselling) of suicide,’’ he said.
Professor Bycroft, who is the managing director of Corporate Diagnostics at Sunshine Beach, said the Sunshine Coast was the obvious location to do this work.
"We’re one of the few regions that have all the issues that are critical to the Commonwealth policy,’’ he said. "We have sea-changers, tree-changers, high unemployment, high population growth and comparatively high suicide rates."
His team includes United Synergies at Tewantin, USC health researcher Professor Edward White, Greengage Research and Communications whose manager, Dr Amalia Matheson, is a part-time lecturer at USC, as well as academics from the University of Queensland and Flinders University in Adelaide.
"We have a range of specialist advisers and key academics who we have cherry-picked from various organisations to be on our consortium," Professor Bycroft said.
The team will consult with all sectors of government and the community to upgrade the framework which aims to provide services and support for individuals and groups at risk of suicide, reduce suicide risk factors and promote well-being, resilience and other protective factors across the country.
The same consortium developed The National Activities In Suicide Bereavement Project – a $260,000 consultancy – which it delivered to the Commonwealth Government in August with Corporate Diagnostics as the lead agency and United Synergies as sub-consultants.
Professor Bycroft said his role at USC was to bring competitively-won contracts, like the Living is for Everyone framework national revision, to the University.
"Winning this contract recognises the fact that there are nationally-skilled and talented people who are working in regional areas and at regional universities,’’ he said. "I hope these sorts of victories will encourage and motivate a large body of staff to see that we can punch above our weight."
This contract follows hot on the heels of another health-related contract secured by the University of the Sunshine Coast.
Professor Edward White and Associate Professor Julie Winstanley last week received a $225,192 grant from the Golden Casket Foundation which could positively influence the quality of mental health nursing practice and the outcomes for patients across Queensland and beyond.
This world-first study will assess whether clinical supervision – a structured staff support arrangement that involves small groups of nurses meeting regularly – will improve the nurses’ personal well-being, the quality of care they deliver and the outcomes for patients.
The study will involve mental health nursing staff at 24 centres in both metropolitan and regional areas of the state, with one centre likely to be on the Sunshine Coast.