Evaluation of the Bringing them home and Indigenous mental health programs
7.2.6 Case closure
Table of contents
- Acknowledgements
- Study Team
- Glossary
- Executive Summary
1. Introduction- 2. Methodology
- 3 Overview of the four programs
- 4 Literature review
- 5 Key outcomes and achievements of the programs
- 6 Key limitations of the programs
7 Management and administrative issues- 8. Workforce issues
- 9. Issues related to the four programs
- 10. Likely future demand
- 11. Conclusions and suggested future directions
- Appendix A: Stakeholders consulted
- Appendix B: Literature review
- References
The Link-Up and BTH services generally do not officially 'close' cases – at the most some classify cases as 'active' versus 'inactive'. A key factor here is that the services do not want clients to feel that they are 'closed off' from the possibility of contacting the service in the future.
This fact has two implications:
- The client numbers reported to OATSIH do not necessarily give a clear picture of the number of 'active' versus 'inactive' clients. 'Active' clients are those with whom services are working on a regular basis. On the other hand, 'inactive' clients are 'on the books' but the service is not actually working with them, unless for example they choose to re-contact the service in the case of the BTH services or some lost records are in fact located in the case of Link-Up clients.
- This contributes to the heavy case loads of services, since they accumulate large numbers of cases over time, but are still maintaining some clients from year to year who require further assistance.