PANDA Annual Impact Report 2022-2023
In 2022-2023, PANDA continued to increase the community understanding of perinatal mental health and work alongside the health care system to meet the needs of all families.
At PANDA, 2022-23 was another year of high demand for our services. We are incredibly thankful to our staff, volunteers, partners, funders and donors who contributed to our work as a trusted source of support, education and information.
We connected more deeply with our history and the story of our beginning 40 years ago. Founders Ann, Jan and Dorothy shared a passionate and moving story to staff and volunteers of their experiences and the lack of support that existed in 1983.
A focus of the past 12 months has been listening to the experiences of our community and embedding this voice more deeply across PANDA. Increasing the community understanding of perinatal mental health and working alongside the health care system to meet the needs of all families, is central to our vision.
We achieved this through the launch of our new Organisational Values, Strategic Approach 2023-2026 and our goal for PANDA to be the leading perinatal mental health organisation for the community.
Read on to hear about how we are delivering on the pillars and enablers of our Strategic Approach:
- Lead with lived experience
- Engage a valued workforce
- Deliver leading services
- Provide quality information
- Data and digital
- Research and evaluation
- Sustainability
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Message from Julie Borninkhof, PANDA CEO
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Message from Ben Lannan, PANDA Board Chair
Our impact
A snapshot of our impact
PANDA operates Australia’s only specialised national perinatal mental health Helpline. Staffed by specialist paid and volunteer practitioners from multidisciplinary peer and clinical backgrounds, we work with families who are experiencing mental health and wellbeing issues and supports during the perinatal period.
In 2022-2023 PANDA:
- Delivered 55,326 contacts with callers across the country.
- Supported 9,266 individual people.
- Worked with 200+ health care providers through our secondary consultation service.
Sadly, 73% of callers had been experiencing challenges for up to 3 months prior to reaching out for help. This early period is a significant time for infant attachment. Mental health and wellbeing challenges may have an impact on this connection between parent and baby and for this reason, PANDA advocate strongly for people to reach out for support early.
Over the course of the year, callers have shared increasingly complex challenges that they are experiencing. 18% identified experiencing significant issues other than anxiety and depression, including Borderline Personality Disorder, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and eating disorders. 18% of callers assessed at intake were experiencing suicidal ideation at time of calling for support.
- 10% of our callers were male.
- 28% of callers were in the antenatal period (pregnancy). 42% of these callers were pregnant with their second child.
WHAT OUR COMMUNITY ARE EXPERIENCING
By supporting the full spectrum of experiences, from feelings of fatigue, overwhelm and sadness right through to acute mental health conditions, PANDA plays a critical role in Australia's perinatal mental health service landscape.
During this reporting period our Mental Health Checklist was completed by over 38,000 people. This community need indicated:
- 77% were experiencing sleep difficulties
- 89% felt exhausted, even with sleep
- 28% were doing unsafe things
- 23% felt an urge to self harm
- 62% were experiencing feelings of panic
- 86% had sudden changes in mood
- 22% felt unsafe in their relationship
- 61% had intimacy issues with their partner
- 55% felt afraid to be alone with their baby
- 71% found it hard to leave their home
- 73% felt like a terrible parent
Reinforcing why our investment in web resources, social content and our national Helpline is more important than ever.
Leading with lived experience
Leading with lived experience
Lived experience is at the centre of PANDA, and our operations. We will ensure everything we do is informed by people who have personal experience of mental health issues. The person, family, carers and supporters will be central to all we do.
Community Engagement & Participation
- 9 Governance, Board and related committees
Contribution of lived experience on the Helpline
Peer work is a key part of PANDA’s Helpline services, and increasingly other areas of PANDA such as education and training. PANDA’s peer support team delivered 1,223 hours of support on the Helpline. Our peer volunteer team was significantly impacted during COVID, but we are pleased to see volunteer numbers and engagement increasing this year.
Introduction of paid peer practitioner roles
This year we have seen the growth of paid peer practitioner roles across the Helpline service model. These roles are embedded in multidisciplinary teams and work alongside clinical counsellors to deliver specialised support to PANDA callers.
An independent review of our national Helpline (see more detail in Leading Services section below) evidenced the important impact that our peer workforce has in providing tailored support to our community. This has led to the scoping of our Peer Workforce Framework, to be finalised in 2024.
Community Champion and Clinical Champion program
We had 115 Community Champions contribute at least once to the 296 activities that were completed between 1 July 2022 and 30 June 2023.
Community Champions undertook:
- 101 awareness raising activities, including sharing a review of PANDA’s services and presenting at a webinar during Perinatal Mental Health Week.
- 135 development and research opportunities were completed, 123 of these included internal content development where Champions contributed to the development of new PANDA training courses, voted on the new PANDA general poster and submitted ideas for the Perinatal Mental Health Week campaign.
- 7 fundraising events, including 3 events during Perinatal Mental Health Week and 4 for PANDA’s trek to the Scenic Rim.
PANDA launched our first fundraising event since COVID – a trek around QLD Scenic rim to bring together people with a shared lived experience and raise funds for PANDA. This group of passionate trekkers raised over $20,000 and created some strong friendships.
Lived experience governance and advisory group
This year, PANDA undertook organisation and community consultation to inform our Lived Experience Governance Model with LELAN. This resulted in a new approach to advisory functions and Board governance, which will be implemented in 2023-2024.
Grassroots volunteering connecting with community
A key part of PANDA’s work in community, is our collaboration with Pregnancy Baby and Children’s Expos across Australia. Staffed by our State Community Engagement Coordinators and PANDA Community Champion volunteers, we speak to thousands of expecting and new parents and provide resources to support them. These opportunities to answer questions and ensure our services are relevant are vital and we thank our volunteers for making these possible.
PANDA's workforce
Engage a valued workforce
We will attract, develop, retain and reward our staff and volunteers so they feel valued and can actively contribute, because we care about their impact and wellbeing.
Launch of PANDA Values and Values awards
With the launch of our new PANDA values, we also launched our internal team Values Awards. These are an opportunity for all staff to recognise actions and behaviours that reflect our values of brave, collaborative and effective. We celebrate every month, and it is a highlight to hear these peer nominations.
A focus on retention and engagement with staff and volunteers
As with many organisations in the mental health sector, attracting and retaining staff has been a key focus over the 12 months. Through exit surveys and feedback, we know staff are choosing to grow their careers and undertake further development in specialised areas of mental healthcare. Overall, we are achieving retention that is on par or above average, with national averages, resulting in a highly engaged and motivated workforce.
Team collaboration conference
PANDA is a largely remote workforce, after moving from our Nicolson St office to a smaller space in Fitzroy in 2022. Many of our staff are able work from regional and remote locations across Australia, which brings great diversity to PANDA’s workforce. In May 2023, we brought all staff and board members together for an in-person conference to connect and learn. This heightened connection to the PANDA cause and purpose and was an invaluable opportunity for a geographically spread workforce to meet up.
HRIS system launch
We took on a large project to move to an integrated Human Resources Information System, with a goal of protecting our team's personal information, reducing the administrative burden on staff and volunteers, and creating system cost efficiencies.
Supported our people
Understanding the individual differences of our valued workforce and committing to supporting them through the good times and the bad, meant we could support physical, mental, social, and familial issues at an individual level. Through well-being plans and exceptional leave provisions, we retained valued team members across the organisation during this report period.
PANDA's services
Deliver leading services
We will strengthen and broaden partnerships, whilst delivering further supports and care pathways, ensuring they are accessible, equitable and high quality.
External review to evaluate and improve Helpline services
A full external review of Helpline services was conducted by Impact Co. between March and June 2023. Consultation was extensive including over 380 survey responses from consumers, health professionals and PANDA staff and 41 participants in focus groups. The review highlighted areas of improvement and opportunities for growth including the integration of peer and clinical service streams, more client directed service engagement options (such as appointment bookings) and reducing wait times for live caller pick up.
“The Helpline is a unique and necessary service that supports those impacted by perinatal mental health challenges.”
“The supports provided by the Helpline are making a difference for many consumers – including having a positive impact on consumers’ mental health and familial relationships, as well as consumers’ likelihood to seek help in the future.”
Introduction of Saturdays to our Helpline service
Thanks to funding from the Federal Government, and an identified need from families, PANDA extended our Helpline service to include Saturdays. This began in October 2022, and since then we have delivered 2,518 specialised supports on Saturdays. This makes up a growing percentage of our weekly service delivery and works towards our goal of increased accessibility for families.
Expansion of the Intensive Care and Counselling service into Queensland
In Queensland and Victoria, we continued to expand our Intensive Care and Counselling program. This specialised program offers more frequent in-depth telehealth care for families experiencing more complex mental health and socio-economic issues. Across both states, we supported 1,123 callers through this program with an average of 4 care interactions per caller.
National Perinatal Helpline Transition to Salesforce
In late 2022, PANDA began the development of a new Salesforce system (Periwell) to support the operations and system requirements of the National Perinatal Helpline. The user experience of Helpline staff is pivotal in shaping system features and functionality, as are the needs and requirements of the community we support and our funding partners. Our Periwell system will allow us to collect data more effectively and make informed decisions based on real-time insights, ensuring our secure services remain aligned with evolving and changing demands. We couldn’t have commenced this important work without the generous support of our valued partner, the Priceline Sisterhood Foundation.
Reaccreditation as a Mental Health Service
In March 2023, PANDA was successfully reaccredited under the National Standards in Mental Health Services at the QIC Health and Community Service Standards. Accreditation under these standards encourages a culture of continuous improvement, driving PANDA to regularly assess and enhance our practices. Accreditation holds us accountable for our practices, promotes transparency and fosters confidence in the quality and reliability of our services. As part of this accreditation cycle, PANDA has undertaken several quality improvement projects including our 2023 Helpline Review, as well as strengthening our Regulatory and Compliance Frameworks and cyber security procedures.
Information and education
Provide quality information and education
We will provide practical, evidence-based education and resources to support health and care providers and community to best support families. We will raise awareness of perinatal mental health and reduce the barriers to help seeking.
Perinatal Mental Health Week
Every year since 2015, PANDA has celebrated Perinatal Mental Health Week. Alongside the national campaign, PANDA’s theme was “Building your community of care” which resonated strongly with community and health care audiences. We achieved 767 media mentions over the week-long campaign and over 8,000 people visited our website.
We also ran smaller targeted campaigns including Men’s Health Week, targeted health care provider campaign, Intensive Care and Counselling campaign (QLD) and a focus on perinatal suicide.
Launch of new free self-paced education courses
Over the course of the year, the Education and Training team launched 6 new free self-paced courses on the PANDA Learning Hub. These courses are designed for health care providers including GPs, midwives, allied health professionals and playgroup leaders, funded by the Victorian Government. We also launched our quarterly email newsletter to health care providers, including information about leading practice and links to new resources.
Digital platforms, new resources and print distribution of information
Our website and mental health checklist continue to be a focus for providing information and resources for community. Our website continued to perform well with nearly 225,000 users and 500,000 unique pageviews. The time spent on our webpages increased by 20% to nearly 2 minutes, showing deeper engagement with content. Our mental health checklist is a key part of PANDA’s services with nearly 30,000 completions in 2022-23. Importantly, completion of the checklist by dads grew by 30% this year.
We distributed 210,447 printed resources to health care settings and local communities across Australia. We continue to invest in targeted evidence-based content that is developed in partnership with our lived experience and clinical communities.
Building on our strong partnership with Baby Bunting and Priceline Sisterhood
PANDA continued a strong partnership with Baby Bunting, undertaking another annual national awareness and fundraising campaign in April. This campaign raised over $280,000 further evidencing Baby Buntings incredible support for PANDA and commitment to families all over Australia.
Priceline Sisterhood has supported PANDA for many years, and our strong partnership has enabled PANDA to establish better systems and resources to support families including PANDA Learning Hub and PANDA Helpline telephone systems.
New resources developed
Intrusive thoughts during the transition to parenthood
There’s one type of thought that many expecting and new parents experience that isn’t talked about much, if at all – intrusive thoughts.
‘Intrusive thoughts’ are unwanted, unexpected, often repetitive thoughts that may not be aligned with our personal values and self-identity.
New resources developed
Self-care for pregnancy and new parenthood
The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare says that self-care is a core activity of daily living. Self-care isn’t a luxury, like an occasional or one-off special event. It’s the small, everyday actions we take to look after ourselves and our loved ones, and the things that help us make life feel manageable and enjoyable.
New resources developed
Meet our volunteers: Jo
"It wasn't until 2019 when a friend of mine told me about the Community Champion program with PANDA that I even knew there was a way I could volunteer to help others who were experiencing similar challenges. I signed up to become a Community Champion and have been doing whatever I can to help share the incredible work PANDA does."
New resources developed
Including dads in the perinatal conversation
Dads play an essential and positive role supporting their babies and partners during pregnancy and early parenthood.
Research suggests that dads often feel left out or sidelined in perinatal care conversations about mental health and wellbeing.
Including dads in the perinatal conversation, from planning to pregnancy and early parenthood, supports dads when they need it most - and builds a solid foundation of care for the whole family unit.
Digital, data and systems
Investing in digital, data and systems
Innovation, insights, and systems.
A focus on digital security
PANDA is committed to ensuring the security and integrity of the data we collect through the delivery of services and operations. Targeted work has been undertaken to further strengthen our digital environment and enhance cybersecurity practices. In the past 12 months we have significantly increased investment in our digital infrastructure and refined strategies to cultivate staff awareness and cybersecurity hygiene.
Data Management and monitoring
In 2022, PANDA undertook considerable work to map and transform our service and health record data in preparation for the rollout of our new Helpline Salesforce app, Periwell. We have also improved integration between our digital systems to centralise data collection, analysis, and reporting. These measures will help us take a more holistic view of operations and service delivery, including reducing manual errors and allowing timely and immediate response to performance issues.
Research and evaluation
Research and evaluation
Evidence, quality and impact.
Active participation and engagement with researchers
PANDA were proud to be invited to speak and present on our national Helpline services throughout the year. Highlights include:
- World Association for Infant Mental Health in Dublin, presenting on PANDA’s Suicide Support Services.
- Suicide Prevention Australia, National Conference Canberra.
- Perinatal Mental Health Symposium, Western Australia, presenting on the challenges of operating a national mental health helpline through a pandemic.
We were also proud of being a part of the partnership between the Stronger Futures CRE, Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, PANDA and James Cook University, resulting in their lease and dissemination of the “Making Sense of the Unseen” perinatal suicide research project and recommendations.
Sustainability
Sustainability
Financial, environmental and ethical.
As a purpose driven, not-for-profit organisation, financial, environment, and ethical sustainability guide and are embedded in all operational and strategic activity and approaches. This has driven our office relocation, our infrastructure investment, and our funding diversification, resulting in significant savings (financial and environmental) in 2022-23.
Funding
Where our funding comes from
PANDA has been supported by community and government funding for 40 years. We couldn’t do what we do without this ongoing commitment.
In 22-23, we were funded by:
Government:
- QLD Government
- Federal Department of Health
- Victorian Department of Education and Training
- Victorian Department of Families, Fairness and Housing
Service agreements:
- NSW Ministry of Health
- SMS4Dads/University of Newcastle
- PDeC/Parent Infant Research Institute
- Adelaide Primary Health Network
Corporate partners:
- Baby Bunting
- Priceline Sisterhood Foundation
Fundraising:
- Corporate donors
- Individual donors
