Mind Australia has been providing mental health support services to the Cairns community since 2015. Today, we proudly provide a full complement of services that can support people in Cairns and its hinterland at every point on their recovery journey. These are:
- Cairns Community Care Unit
- Individual Recovery Support Program
- Group Based Recovery Support Program
- Step Up Step Down service
- Crisis Support Space
These services are described at the end of this article.
Our footprint in Cairns has given us a unique opportunity to not only evaluate the strengths and opportunities for improvement of individual services – which we do for all our services - but to consider the advantages and any challenges of a model in which a single provider delivers multiple services across a support ecosystem.
Mind evaluated the performance of these services between July 2019 and February 2025 and some significant themes emerged, which are shared below.
Mind is part of the fabric of the Cairns community
The evaluation showed that service users, families, and supporters trust Mind to provide a continuum of care. The Crisis Support Space, in particular, provides flexible support as needed. This means service users could exit a program and still feel confident support was there when they needed it.
Continuum of Care
People accessing support in Cairns can move between the Mind services with warm referrals as their needs change through life – a key benefit of recovery services being integrated through a single service provider. In a warm referral, the referral comes from someone with an established relationship with both the person being referred and the service or professional, making it more credible and trusted.
First Nations communities
The evaluation found that a high number of First Nations people engage with Mind services across the continuum of care. First Nations people are 10% of the general Cairns population but anywhere from 27% to 40% of the participants in Cairns’ Mind-managed mental health services in Cairns.
While this reflects the statistically higher rates of mental health and wellbeing challenges faced by First Nations people nationally*, due to the intergenerational trauma of colonisation, it is encouraging that Cairns’ First Nations communities feel able to engage with our services, many coming from remote areas to access them.
“Indigenous Australians are estimated to have between 1.6 and 3.3 times the national prevalence of anxiety and mood disorders.” ‘Estimating the difference in prevalence of common mental disorder diagnoses for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples compared to the general Australian population’: I.S. Page et al.
Mind’s support ecosystem in Cairns
Cairns Community Care Unit (since 2019)
Provides up to two years’ residential recovery, with 24/7 clinical and recovery support, to help people with serious mental health challenges build skills for independent living.
Service satisfaction scores residents and carers 79% - 92%
Individual Recovery Support Program and Group Based Recovery Support Program
(since 2019)
Provides up to 12 months of personalised outreach support to help people with mental health and wellbeing challenges to live independently and well in the community. Staff work with participants, their families and carers.
Service satisfaction scores: residents 87% - 97%, carers 65% to 95%
Cairns Step Up Step Down service (since 2015)
Up to 28 days residential recovery support to transition from acute inpatient support (step down) or as a step up support from living in the community, to avoid hospitalisation.
Service satisfaction: residents 74% - 94% carers 74% to 94%
Crisis Support Space (since 2021)
A safe, supportive alternative to Emergency Department presentations for people experiencing crisis or distress. Support from two Mind Australia Peer Workers and a Cairns and Hinterland Hospital and Health Service Senior Mental Health Clinician.
This report and many other great stories appear in Mind’s 2024-2025 Annual Report.