Case study: Scaling Orygen’s hospital in the home for young people in Melbourne

In 2020-21, TACSI partnered with YLab to co-design an increased scale of Orygen’s ‘hospital in the home’ concept, specifically developed for young people in Melbourne.

The opportunity

The youth hospital in the home (HiTH) is an addition to the acute services provided by Orygen, which partners with young people, families and carers to provide inpatient-like care within the home environment. Ylab and Orygen approached TACSI to support a co-design process with carers and young people to discover the challenges and opportunities for providing acute healthcare services in the home. 

Through this collaboration, we aimed to positively disrupt the loop in and out of mental health crises and distress. We identified key themes and worked with young people and carers to co-design service principles, concepts and desired experiences. 

We developed a set of shared principles to underpin the service model, its delivery and evaluation, and discovered the challenges and opportunities for providing these acute services in the home.

Image 1: 'Safety net' drawing by carer
Image 2: Group Synthesis
Image 3: Orygen HiTH Journeys

Our approach

Through a series of virtual interviews and workshops, the co-design team discovered service principles, concepts, and desired experiences to positively disrupt the loop in and out of mental health crisis and distress. The young people and carers articulated their healthcare journey as a repeating cycle, ripe for disruption.

What’s next

The co-design team, carers, and young people developed a set of shared principles to underpin the service model, its delivery and evaluation. The process led to the creation of short and long-term opportunities to develop the service and staff to permanently disrupt the loop.

Interested in co-creating a service or model that supports people through investing in lived experience and peer-to-peer practices? Talk to us about how we can bring co-design to your next project.

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