Hamilton Centre: The statewide system for integrated care of mental health and addiction

Co-designing the statewide system for integrated care of addiction and mental health in Victoria

“The MADA/ Monash team brought thoughtfulness, creativity and academic rigour to the co-design process that supported the development of the Hamilton Centre, Victoria's statewide service for integrated care of addiction and mental illness. This interdisciplinary collaboration enabled stakeholders from a variety of backgrounds, including people with individual or carer lived experience, to have a voice and to meaningfully contribute to the service design."

Associate Professor Shalini Arunogiri, Clinical Director, Turning Point Statewide Services & Hamilton Centre, Eastern Health

Between 70–90% of people living with addiction also experience co-occurring mental illness. The complexity of this cohort’s presentations is compounded by the challenges they encounter while navigating multiple fragmented service systems for both alcohol and other drug (AOD) and mental health support. To address these issues, the Royal Commission into Victoria's Mental Health System recommended that all mental health and wellbeing services provide high quality integrated treatment, care and support for people with co-occurring mental illness and addiction. The Commission also recommended the establishment of a new Statewide Centre to support this work.

The Hamilton Centre is Victoria’s statewide service for people living with mental illness and substance use or addiction. The centre’s co-design consultation, led by MADA researchers, brought together 57 participants from 40+ organisations across mental health (MH) and alcohol-and-other-drugs (AOD) sectors to develop a best practice model for integrated care that supported the establishment of the centre. The process identified: system-level barriers to the delivery of integrated care, specific training needed, and initiatives supporting cultural change. The Hamilton Centre’s specialised addiction services are delivered by a network of reputable public hospitals: St Vincent’s Hospital, Eastern Health, Western Health, Austin Health, and Goulburn Valley Health.

The multi-phased co-design process drew on real-life experiences using personas (co-created with lived experience and clinical expertise) to ground discussion through the lens of lived experience. Workshops responded to Royal Commission (RC) Recommendation 35 for integrated care, focusing on core principles of Inclusion, Access, Capability and Participation. Six months later, the project brought together the same group with leadership staff from across sectors to discuss the process of change toward integrated care.

The Hamilton Centre serves as a flagship within Australia for advancing integrated care, offering direct clinical care alongside training programs, scholarships, mentorship and navigation assistance. In its first year alone, the centre has received more than 793 referrals and 127 enrolments in training modules, contributing to reshaping the narrative on how care is provided globally in co-occurring mental health and substance use disorders.

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Personas
Four workshop personas were crafted in collaboration with Monash researchers and Turning Point, utilising client-facing clinical experience. The persona posters were printed on A2 paper and posted to workshop participants.
‘Integrated Care - Inclusion’ MIRO Board
MIRO Board from Workshop #1, focusing on the experience of persona ‘Johan’.
Hamilton Centre Poster Series
A series of posters were created as one-page summaries of the key findings from the workshops.
Statewide Centre for Addiction and Mental Health Consultation Report
A report that outlines the findings from the two sets of co-design workshops.