Impact
reports

The Primary Care Impact Grants – Chronic Disease Prevention Program supports primary care providers across the North Coast to develop and deliver locally led approaches to chronic disease prevention. The program focuses on identifying health risks earlier, supporting healthier behaviours and improving access to preventive care before chronic disease develops or worsens.

The program aims to reduce the future burden of chronic disease while strengthening the capacity of primary care providers to deliver evidence-based prevention activities. View the Primary Care Impact Grants – Chronic Disease Prevention awardees.

What we are learning

Early insights show strong interest and engagement from primary care providers and communities in preventive health. Providing practices with the opportunity to develop approaches suited to their patients and local communities has supported engagement, while accessible application and evaluation processes have also been identified as important.

The program has also provided insights into the types of preventive health initiatives practices would like to deliver when appropriate funding is available. An external evaluation will further explore the program and help inform recommendations for future grant activities.

Resilient Kids was a multi-stream program designed to support the mental health, wellbeing and resilience of children and young people in flood-affected communities across the Northern Rivers of New South Wales. The program ran from April 2022 to December 2025 and supported children and young people aged 8–18.

What we wanted to achieve
The goal was to contribute to a more resilient population of young people with improved mental health and social and emotional wellbeing, who are willing and able to seek and receive help when required.

Long-term outcomes included improving resilience, mental health and social and emotional wellbeing; increasing health literacy and help-seeking behaviours; improving disaster preparedness; strengthening social connections; building community and system resilience; and increasing the evidence base for what works in building resilience for children and young people in a disaster context.

How the program was evaluated
An independent evaluation was undertaken by Beacon Strategies, considering the program’s appropriateness, effectiveness, implementation, impact and sustainability. Evaluation methods included program monitoring data, participant-reported outcome and experience measures, surveys, interviews and focus groups, and document and evidence reviews.

The impact
The evaluation found that Resilient Kids improved wellbeing and resilience outcomes. More than 82% of participants in Stream 1 workshops agreed they knew about services that help, could make good decisions about their wellbeing and felt better prepared for disasters following a disaster education workshop.

Following Stream 2 individual therapeutic support, there was a 9.2% increase in young people reporting a normal level of social and emotional wellbeing. There was also a 24.8% reduction in Aboriginal young people reporting high or very high levels of psychological distress at their last assessment compared with their first.

What worked well
Key strengths included providing age-relevant and accessible support in informal and non-clinical settings, delivering services where young people were, providing free access, and creating opportunities for healthy peer connection.
The program also used family-inclusive approaches, incorporated young people’s voices through co-design, provided a tailored Aboriginal-led stream, prioritised access for neurodivergent young people and those disengaged from mainstream schooling, and offered flexible activities that were practical, engaging and socially connected.

What we learned
The evaluation found that Resilient Kids filled an important service gap, particularly for children and young people affected by flooding who were not engaged with existing services. The multi-stream approach provided flexible entry points and activities to meet different needs, while demand for support remained high beyond the immediate disaster period.

The findings also highlighted the importance of equity and cultural safety, trusted relationships and locally embedded delivery. Flexible and participatory approaches involving young people and families were important to the program’s success, while the evaluation identified challenges associated with short-term funding and continuity of support.

What’s next
Learnings from the design, delivery and evaluation of Resilient Kids will contribute to understanding what works to support young people experiencing the mental health and wellbeing impacts of disasters and help inform future commissioning and service improvements.

The evaluation identified considerations for future services including continuity of care, workforce capacity for outreach, support for parents and caregivers, early intervention for children under 12, activity-based and relational approaches, multidisciplinary teams, stronger partnerships with schools and improved measurement of disaster resilience outcomes over time.