Portfolio — 17 June 2026
Assistant Minister for Mental Health and Suicide Prevention Emma McBride announced two new Perinatal Mental Health Centres for Melbourne's Hume and Casey local government areas, to be operated by Gidget Foundation Australia with full Australian Government funding [TA-260617-health-0b1526089cd4]. The centres will deliver free psychological support to new and expectant parents who hold a GP referral and mental health care plan — removing both financial and referral barriers for outer-suburban families.
The two Melbourne sites are part of a $39.2 million national commitment to establish 20 Perinatal Mental Health Centres across the country, with each of the Melbourne locations projected to serve approximately 800 parents each year [TA-260617-health-0b1526089cd4]. The announcement grounds the investment in documented epidemiological need: around one in five women and one in ten men experience anxiety or depression during the perinatal period, and outer-suburban communities face compounded difficulty accessing specialist perinatal mental health services.
Hume and Casey — both high-growth, outer-metropolitan corridors with large young-family populations — represent precisely the demographic the program targets. The choice of Gidget Foundation Australia as operator signals a preference for specialist perinatal providers over general mental health services. No parliamentary activity was recorded for this minister on 17 June 2026, and no prior-context candidates were supplied, so today's record stands as a single comms-stream announcement.
The official records this note draws on — the raw primary documents themselves, as published.