Youth Focus Bunbury

Youth Focus is an independent West Australian not-for-profit working to stop youth suicide. Youth Focus works with young people aged 12-25 to help them overcome issues associated with depression, anxiety, self-harm and suicidal thoughts through the provision of free, unlimited and professional face-to-face individual and family counselling and other mental health services. The demand for our services is ever-increasing and with only a small percentage of our operating funding sourced from the Government, we rely heavily on the goodwill and support of the corporate and community sectors. What do we do? Each year, about 2,500 young people aged 12-25 will visit one of our eight offices or 40 school locations statewide to get help. The average length of counselling engagement is about six months. We estimate that in 2015, about 15,000 people took part in our preventative and educational programs. In the 2015-16 period, our expert staff provided more than 1,000 counselling sessions to families. We believe that the family has a fundamental role in the health and social engagement of young people and that the inclusion of the family from the very beginning of counselling leads to a more rapid and more sustainable improvement in the young person and better long-term outcomes than individual therapy. Aside from youth and family counselling our other core services and offerings include workplace training, youth mental health training, peer support programs and mentoring programs. Why is Youth Focus different? Our services are totally free Our services are delivered by highly qualified and experienced mental health practitioners who are all certified to national standards Our services are unlimited – you can come as often as you need to, for as long as you need support No diagnosis is required: you can simply call us and make an appointment without having visited your GP What does our perfect world look like? One where young people are confident, empowered, feel a great sense of connection and belonging in their communities.