Abstract
Many regional, rural, and remote areas rely on visiting workforce models for the provision of mental health services, due to both difficulties with recruitment and retention of rural health professionals and potentially insufficient population density to sustain specialized resident services. Visiting workforce models provide potential unique challenges and opportunities for mental health clinicians providing these services; organizations overseeing rural and remote mental health service delivery; individual service users; and the wider rural, remote, or regional community. Given these distinctive features, it is essential that mental health practitioners providing visiting services to regional, rural, and remote communities are competent to provide such services. This chapter outlines competencies required for visiting rural and remote mental health practice, including an awareness of the challenges, advantages, and support needs for visiting practitioners. This chapter also reviews wider considerations in visiting mental health service delivery, including considerations for communities. While challenges are acknowledged, this chapter explores how visiting models may provide potential advantages in terms of recruitment, retention, and training of the regional, rural, and remote mental health workforce.
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Sutherland, C. (2021). Visiting Workforce. In: Carey, T.A., Gullifer, J. (eds) Handbook of Rural, Remote, and very Remote Mental Health. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-6631-8_10
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-6631-8_10
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