Southern Moreton Bay Islands (SMBI) programs

This Southern Moreton Bay Islands (SMBI) initiative delivers a community-driven, cross-sector, place-based approach to improve the health and development of children residing on the islands. 

There are numerous challenges associated with delivering health care services to the SMBI area, and health data indicates children residing on SMBI experience a high than average percentage of development vulnerabilities. For this reason, Children’s Health Queensland, Metro South Health, Brisbane South PHN and the SMBI community are working together to improve the health and wellbeing of children aged from birth to 8 years old, including improving maternity care, through the SMBI Community Impact Initiative. 

Since early 2019, over 1,000 community conversations have occurred through the SMBI Initiative. These conversations have informed the development of a collective Action Plan for the initiative that identifies with four key focus areas: 

The four key focus areas of the initiative are: 

1. health and child development, early childhood support and school readiness 

2. a strong and connected community 

3. healthy family relationships 

4. wellbeing programs and recreational activities for school-aged children. 

Through the SMBI Initiative, several changes are being trialled in local health services to improve maternity care and child health and development systems, including: 

• focusing on relationship-based maternity and child health care ensuring the same midwife and the same child health nurse for families. 

• having a SMBI only phone number for families to contact Child Health 

• SMBI community providing information about child development and child health services in a way that is understood by local families 

• more effective support for families to make GP referral to access specialist support 

• allied health support to enable children with developmental concerns to obtain timely services. 

Data and information will be collected to indicate whether the changes were successful and should be permanently implemented, or whether they need to be revised to achieve better health outcomes. 

Delivery partners 

Bay Islands Community Services Inc.	Department of Child Safety, Youth and Women
Bay Islands Multi-Sport and Recreation Association	Department of Education
Benevolent Society	Metro South Health
Children’s Health Queensland	Redland City Council
Yulu-Burri-Ba	Running Wild