Implementation of digital innovation in Australia’s largest national youth counselling service

Kids Helpline offers Australia’s largest youth counselling service, which received 340,000 direct contacts in 2017 alone. While help seeking amongst young Australians, aged 5-25 years is on the rise helpline resourcing and funding is limited. Thus, 54% of all direct contacts to Kids Helpline remain unanswered. Meanwhile, Kids Helpline has seen a significant shift of support-seekers from traditional phone counselling to online technologies such as chat, or email, which provides a great potential for the service to increase its accessibility via alternative media. To increase access to counselling services by implementing innovative digital health technologies. A review of current help-seeking trends and available resources, provided by organisations worldwide is followed by a series of participatory design workshops, to conceptualise a new resource. Two digital resources are developed, which aim to reshape the way young Australians receive support: The Breakup Shakeup app uses behavioural activation to assist young people after a relationship breakup. The ToolKit app utilises Education, Activity Scheduling, monitoring and a wealth of CBT- based approaches to increase agency and self-efficacy in young people with mental health concerns. This presentation will outline key learnings concerning how modern technology is being used to support help-seeking by children and young people and to strengthen counselling practice.