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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 12 Hansard (19 November) . . Page.. 3702 ..

MRS CARNELL (continuing):

There was the mental health services review that was done in May this year - May this year, not after Ms Tucker said she was going to move a no-confidence motion. There is the cover page for anybody who might be interested. There was also the review of the ACT mental health crisis team, also in May this year.

Yesterday we launched the "Mental Health Care in the ACT - Moving Ahead" paper as well. There also have been reviews and work done in areas such as the official visitors scheme; dual diagnosis of intellectual disability and mental illness; first onset psychosis; dual diagnosis HIV and a mental illness; Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders mental health; housing and psychiatric disabilities; mental health research principles and practices. (Extension of time granted) All of those reviews have been done over the last 12 months. Those reviews have come up with a number of approaches that we adopted yesterday in our "Moving Ahead" paper. I think it might be worth while quoting from the mental health services review executive summary. I am happy to table this for members' interest. It says:

The review team is of the opinion that the standard of public sector mental health services in the ACT is high and would rank in the top third of services in the country. Staff are well-trained and appear to be highly motivated. Programs are well-defined and appear to be reasonably well-resourced by national standards.

The adjusted level of per capita expenditure is estimated to be above national average. All services have Australian Council of Healthcare Standards -

that is, ACHS -

accreditation, and some community-based programs have also won national accreditation.

Mr Speaker, every one of our mental health public services in the ACT is accredited. I believe we are the only service in Australia that can say that that is the case. That shows, I think, quite categorically that we are not dealing with a situation or a service that is the worst in Australia. In fact, this report suggests we are in the top third and are spending above the national average. The report then goes on to suggest that there are a number of things that we should change to significantly improve the way we run mental health, and a number of those recommendations were picked up in the report that I launched yesterday. We also had a review of our 24-hour crisis service - again, a report that we will implement in full. What that suggests is that we should be moving from a crisis team approach, which was implemented by the previous Government and which really has a clinical focus, to one that is about supporting people in their own homes - again, I think, a very appropriate approach for mental health generally.

It was interesting to hear on the radio the other day Elizabeth Morgan, the chair of the Mental Health Advisory Council. She said that she had been involved in reform of mental health in South Australia and that every government involved in this sort of reform finds it very difficult. It is very difficult. There are all sorts of competing interests and,

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