How can we help you today?
Distress Brief Support (DBS) is a community-based approach to support people experiencing stress or distress, made up of two elements:
- Community engagement points that provide a compassionate response to people, along with the offer of connection to further support
- A short-term support team that provides up to 3 weeks of practical support, and connections to broader services and supports.
- Community members tend to reach out to family, friends, and social networks or groups when they are experiencing stress or distress, rather than formal services.
- There is a vast range of community groups already established that represent potential community engagement points.
- Whilst the DBS model does not include payment for community engagement points, it does include training, coordination support, and debriefing, and we need to find an agency who can do this work, perhaps one with experience in volunteer coordination.
- The workers in the short-term support team need to be locally based, rather than commuting from Cairns.
- We need to pay attention to rural towns in the region, not just the central locations of Mareeba and Atherton.
- Smaller community organisations are interested in the trial, but don’t have much experience in completing formal application processes for these sorts of activities.
Learn more about what we heard in our Background Reading: Distress Brief Support document.
Tender documentation and submissions are managed through NQPHN’s online tender portal. Any questions regarding the tender are also to be submitted through the online tender portal.
Tender information sessions
Tender information sessions are scheduled to provide an opportunity for NQPHN to present information about the tender process and for potential applicants to ask questions. Please register for a session below.
Distress can take a wide variety of forms. Distress can be an unpleasant emotion, feeling, thought, condition, or behaviour.
Emotional distress may include unpleasant feelings, symptoms, or experiences which may result from a particular event, or life circumstances.
Situational distress may be challenging or a mix experience of thoughts, emotions, bodily sensations, or behaviours, which may result from life events or situations such as grief, a change in health status, relationship breakdown, financial, or workplace or employment difficulties.
Over time, NQPHN will be seeking expressions of interest from individuals and community groups who would like to be an identified community engagement point. Community engagement points will not be paid but will be provided training and ongoing support and may include social clubs, service organisations, public facing workers, family playgroups, Men’s Sheds, mother’s groups, and so on.
In October 2024, NQPHN is planning to launch an application process to identify agency/s (incorporated community organisation, not-for profit organisation, registered charity etc) to be funded to coordinate community engagement points and provide support through training and debriefing.
In October 2024, NQPHN is also planning to launch an application process to identify agency/s to employ the short-term support team working with people who are experiencing distress.
To inform these processes, we’re seeking information about who might be interested through the survey link below. Please complete the survey by Tuesday 1 October 2024.