About Us

What is KIT?

KiT is a mental health promotion tool aiming to empower young people across the Loddon Campaspe to achieve and maintain positive mental health and well-being.

The project consists of a Van that operates as a mobile youth space to deliver youth mental health promotion targeted at young people aged 14 – 18 years.

Project Aims

  • Increase young people’s understanding of mental health
  • Increase young people’s ability to self-manage their mental wellbeing
  • Normalise conversations about mental health and seeking help
  • Promote services, programs, and activities for young people
  • Young people develop skills and grow capacity to design and implement projects that improve their mental wellbeing and garner community support (KIT Crew)

Why?

Young people living across rural and regional Victoria face significant mental health challenges, with rates of self-harm and suicide being higher than their counterparts living in metropolitan areas. With this in mind and following significant consultation with YACVic and young people via the When Life Sucks Youth Forum Series in 2018 within the Loddon Campaspe Region, The Keep in Touch (KiT) project was created in 2020.

 In 2022 the facts are:

  • suicide is the leading cause of death for 15-24 year olds
  • young people aged 12-17 have the highest rate of suicide attempts (2.4% in the last year)
  • three quarters will develop a mental health problem before the reach 25 years old
  • young people have the lowest rates of seeking help or accessing services/supports to address their mental health needs. (MHFA Australia)

Background

In the first phase of KiT, spanning from 2020-2022, the project sourced inspiration and direction from in particular two of the project ideas from the When Life Sucks youth forum series, as detailed below, and saw the development of the KiT website, the KiT mobile app, KiT Facebook page and the KiT Van

When Life Sucks youth forums engaged 160 young people aged 12 to 25 from the Loddon Campaspe region throughout September and October in 2018 to develop twenty ideas for action and outline how together we could take steps towards improving mental health outcomes for young people in our communities.

The top ten ideas from this youth forum series are listed in brief below: