The wider community perception of mental illness presents barriers to participation, the Access For all Abilities program in Gippsland has not actively engaged people with mental health problems and sporting clubs currently do not have the capacity or know how to engage and include these members of our community. It has been our experience that people with mental health problems and their carers are less likely to be involved in sporting clubs and groups. If at all, people living with mental illness are introduced into these groups by a support agency worker and the support is not sustained beyond the introduction.

SNAP Connecting To Sport is a partnership project with GippSport that aims to address barriers to participation in active sport and recreation within local communities in Gippsland.
GippSport is the regional sports assembly for Gippsland which supports grass roots sport and recreation. GippSport encourages participation in active recreation with access for all by supporting welcome and inclusive clubs and creating health though sport. The Welcoming and Inclusive Club program run by GippSport encourages clubs to become more aware of the barriers that prevent people from joining sporting clubs and it also provides assistance to clubs to take concrete steps towards improving access for all people.
SNAP Gippsland Inc. is a Community Managed Mental Health Service that has delivered  psychosocial rehabilitation and recovery oriented models of service and care to Gippslanders since 1992. SNAP recognises that recovery is a staged, individual process involving hope, meaning, identity and responsibility. It works with people with mental illness and their families to rekindle hope, set and achieve goals and reconnect with their communities.
In 2009 GippSport approached SNAP Gippsland Inc to further discuss the development of a project that would fit within the objectives of the State Government “Building Inclusive Sports Grants 2010 – 2012” application criteria. The objective of the grant was to form a partnership with other key agencies to further develop inclusive and innovative sport and recreation opportunities for people with a disability throughout Victoria. SNAP was very keen to work more closely with Gippsport as two relatively recent studies involving SNAP participants had already revealed that our clients’ physical health was a barrier to wellness and we had been looking for a vehicle to utilise this knowledge and move it into a practical and sustainable program.

The grant was approved in late 2010 and the process of employing a project worker, writing the research brief and getting ethics approval began. As this gained momentum there was and continues to be a lot of interest in this project from other areas. The Latrobe Valley and Baw Baw Local Government Areas were not part of the initial application, but it soon became clear that the project would need to extend tho these areas. SNAP has managed to find the funds to extend into these areas, thus allowing a whole of Gippsland approach.

The project submitted addressed the second target of the application process, to “Develop new active sport and recreation opportunities for people with a mental illness or Autistic Spectrum Disorder”.  It was our hypothesis that the involvement of people with a mental illness in sport and/or active recreation will assist their reconnection with their community and ultimately lead to improved mental health outcomes. An additional focus of our application included carers of people living with a mental illness in an effort to have carers take the opportunity to consider their own mental health and physical wellbeing.

The establishment of a Gippsland wide Reference Group with the inclusion of Local Government will ensure that there is strong support and buy in for this program. South Gippsland and Bass Coast are identified as growth areas and Wellington, Latrobe, Baw Baw and East Gippsland Shires have been bushfire and flood affected. All six local government areas have pockets of socio-economic disadvantage.

People with mental illness have poor physical health outcomes and their life expectancy is 18-20 years less than the rest of the community. Carers of people with mental illness often express feelings of isolation, loneliness and loss of identity. This project aims to educate individuals and build the capacity of sporting organisations and clubs to be inclusive and provide support and access for people with a mental illness.

Consumers and carers participated in the design of the proposal and will be consulted about the information to be presented to clubs and how it is delivered. When possible a consumer of mental health services will be involved in the delivery of the information sessions to club members.

All Gippsland sporting clubs have been identified and consultation with consumer groups and carers will determine which clubs will be targeted based on criteria including affordability, appeal and personal preference. Regular consumer input will be sought at monthly consumer forums in all Local Government areas.

The program will be developed in five locations across Gippsland:

• East Gippsland
• Wellington
• South Gippsland/Bass Coast
• Latrobe Valley
• Baw Baw

Together SNAP and GippSport will educate and build the capacity of sporting/recreation clubs and groups to enable them to welcome and include people with mental health problems and their carers. GippSport, will deliver Welcome and Inclusive Clubs packages and SNAP will deliver Mental Health First Aid and provide basic Mental Health education, thus collaboratively building the capacity of those clubs to welcome people with mental health problems.

This project aims to identify and train facilitators/”champions” inside the clubs; this is a new and different way of assisted participation. Through training, the facilitators / ”champions” role will be to support the inclusion of people with mental illness and carers into clubs to reduce the associated stigma and to become that point of difference.

Club members will be offered Mental Health First Aid training and basic information sessions about mental illness. This training will inform and educate the members and potentially their families about mental illness, personal awareness and about early warning signs. This will raise community awareness, become a health promoting activity, and also break down stigma by identifying the facts and dispelling the myths about mental illness diagnosis and presentation.

Monash University Department of Rural and Indigenous Health (MUDRIH) will undertake the research and evaluation component of this project and will record and document their findings in relation to the impact on participants, impact on sporting clubs, improvement in health outcomes and the feelings and perceptions of the clients, carers, club members and “champions” before and after the program is implemented. This will include questionnaires, focus groups and interviews.
Consumer and Carers will participate in a baseline physical health check by a General Practitioner which will be repeated at the end of the project. Vital statistics including Blood Pressure, Weight, Height, Body Mass Index and Blood Glucose will be recorded along with the existence of Chronic Disease and any early indicators of undiagnosed Chronic Disease.
This project has been informed by two pieces of work in 2008 and 2009 during the time SNAP was reforming its Day Program, a study undertaken by SNAP in the East Gippsland region in 2008 revealed the poor physical health status of adults with mental health problems. It consisted of a physical health check by a GP, followed by a program of physical activity over 12 months. The second piece of work was a small research project conducted in 2009 on behalf of SNAP by Monash Gippsland Community Based Placement medical students in the South Gippsland/Bass Coast area. Both of these projects demonstrated the breadth and depth of physical health issues experienced by SNAP clients including high levels of smoking, alcohol and other drugs intake, low income, poor nutrition, high Body Mass Index, social isolation and low levels of confidence and or self-esteem were identified as barriers to active participation.

Our hope is that the results of MUDRIH’s research will prove that this new program will enable people with mental health problems to be included in a range of sporting and recreation clubs across Gippsland, achieve improved health outcomes, enjoy their chosen sport and be understood, accepted and valued as a contributing member of the club(s) and community.

References

Gillian Street and Ray James: “The Relationship between Organized Recreational Activity and Mental Health” Mentally Healthy WA Centre for Behavioural Research in Cancer Control, Curtin University, 2010.