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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 10 Hansard (25 September) . . Page.. 3291 ..

MS REILLY (continuing):

We saw in this year's budget - and I am sure that this will be mentioned - that there is to be an increase of $250,000; but we need a guarantee that this is new money being put into the system, additional to what was spent earlier, and that it has not come from savings. At this point in time, as the ACT Mental Health Service looks towards providing more community-based services rather than hospital-based services, we cannot find savings. Let us get some good-quality, well-established community-based services first, before we see whether there are any savings to be gained from this process.

If we take the savings from the front end, there will be no opportunity to ensure that community-based services can be set up well, that any problems can be ironed out and that they are the right services. As we move to more community-based services - I think this is important, and the Government has said that it is starting to work towards this - we need to look at how we go about it. We need to make sure that we follow good, strong processes of competitive tendering, that we look at the staffing of the services, and that we look at whether it should all be done in the public sphere, as it is in other States, or whether non-government service agencies should be providing these services.

We need to look at some of the other issues as well. One of the things that must be respected and recognised in this area is consumer rights. There is no point in setting up a whole range of services that do not take account of the people who will be using those services. There must be strong consultation with and advocacy for the consumers and the friends of the consumers. It is important that that be undertaken with the development of any new services in the future.

There are just a few recommendations which I need to emphasise. I would commend all the recommendations to people in this place and in the community; but there are some on which I want to make particular comment. One thing that was noted by the public servants working in the area was the fact that there is not an integrated plan being developed. So, we are developing new services without a plan. I think this is something that must be rectified urgently. It seems ludicrous that we can set up new services without having an idea of the overall framework of mental health service delivery in the ACT. This must be addressed immediately. One of the other areas on which we put particular emphasis - this came from the material that was placed before the committee and also through discussion within the community - was the adequacy of services for young people and for children. There seems to be a glaring gap in the ACT services. There is a child and adolescent mental health service, and it works well; but it is inadequately resourced. In some cases, the waiting times are much too long for people who are concerned about the wellbeing of their children or are in crisis. We should not have a service that has resourcing only to respond to crises.

The people in one of the services that we looked at in Victoria talked particularly about the importance of early intervention in psychosis. If we allow young people to develop psychotic illnesses, without trying to intervene at an earlier stage, we are setting up more problems for the future. Early intervention in a number of areas seems to be the way to ensure that people have the opportunity for much better health in their adult lives.

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