Inside Sydney’s new mental health centre where kids will be treated free

Families will be able to access walk-in specialist support at Sydney’s first free children’s mental health centre from 2027.

The new Medicare Kids Hub will provide free mental health support for zero to 12-year-olds with mild to moderate developmental, emotional, relational or behavioural challenges. They will not need a referral.

“Most mental health conditions in Australia develop before the age of 12, and we know the real difference that earlier identification, intervention and support can make for both children and families,” Emma McBride, federal assistant minister for mental health and suicide prevention, said.

The Penrith Kids Hub is the final hub of four NSW centres announced in 2023 as part of a $50.8 million joint investment by the Minns and Albanese governments.

The existing hubs in Wollongong, the Central Coast and Orange have delivered more than 17,000 appointments and support sessions since they opened last year.

The new centre is expected to serve families across western Sydney, the Hawkesbury and the Blue Mountains. It will feature play facilities, sensory spaces and six consulting rooms.

“There’s a lot of young families here, [and] there’s a lot of disadvantage here,” NSW Minister for Mental Health Rose Jackson said. “We want to make sure we’re locating [these services] in communities where that’s going to have the biggest impact.”

But the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists remains concerned that the opening of one hub for Sydney’s population of 5 million people will do little to curb the escalating youth mental health crisis.

“This piecemeal [approach] is really not shifting the dial,” UNSW Sydney child and adolescent psychiatry chair Professor Valsamma Eapen said.

“Any investment in the under 12 is always extremely welcome … but it cannot be another fragmented little service with very specific criteria.”

Eapen said there had been an underinvestment in services for children, with adolescent centres such as Headspace prioritised: “[If] 75 per cent of adult health problems start before the age of 25, I would say 50 per cent of that starts before the age of 14.”

Schofields resident and lived-experience manager at Being Mental Health Consumers Kylie Smith said waiting for her child Logan to turn 12 to access Headspace services was “really frustrating”.

“We need options,” Smith said. “There’s nowhere else to go apart from Headspace [which] is from 12 to 25, and a lot happens before that age.”

Logan began to struggle with bullying and anxiety from about year 5, and their mental health gradually deteriorated. Now 13, Logan has only been able to attend school for about three days this year.

While support from a school counsellor was helpful, Smith said having access to a service such as Kids Hub at a younger age could potentially have stopped his condition from escalating to self-harm.

“Anyone can go through that,” Logan said. “If there’s something that children can go to which [is] easier to access, then you can kind of prevent some things earlier.”

Chief executive of Mental Health Carers NSW Jonathan Harms said the new hub was terrific: “For every dollar invested in child mental health, we know there’s a return of between $9 and $13, which is an incredible investment for the public to make.”

However, he said the hubs – of which there are 17 across Australia – had not been well planned, and that questions remained about which identified gap they were designed to cover and how they would work with existing services such as Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) in NSW.

“How will both systems work if they’re supporting the same person, and how do they pass people between them as people go up and down in severity and level of need?

“Then there’s of course the fact that they never seem to intend to cover 100 per cent of the need for these services.”

Jackson said the government would seek feedback on how the initial hubs were working before looking to expand them in future. Jackson and McBride took the Herald inside the hub site, which is a former GP clinic, on Wednesday. Jackson said once renovated, it would be run by the local health district.

“That integration with our district means that those pathways through to our CAMHS team, to our Safeguards team, and later, if needed, to our Adolescent Acute Unit, are really warm,” she said.

“There’s no bouncing between services. It’s all run by the district and young people are supported to access whatever point in the system they need to receive support.”

Dr Annaliese Finnane, a child and adolescent psychiatrist from Nepean Blue Mountains Local Health District, said poor mental health among children was a growing issue, with about one in seven children affected.

“It’s actually a bigger community issue than we would like to think,” she said. “We need a whole community approach to the difficulties that we’re seeing for our young people, and I think this answer is a first step.”

The Penrith site, opposite Nepean Hospital, has sat empty for three years. It will be staffed by a multidisciplinary team including allied health, nurses, Aboriginal health workers, peer workers and specialist medical staff.

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