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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 4 Hansard (11 April) . . Page.. 1023 ..

close monitoring, is 'case-managed' by the Forensic Mental Health Service. Finally, if the remandee is not currently on the Mental Health database, but are deemed to be 'well' they are entered without a diagnosis being given, with an annotation as having been given an 'Induction Interview' at BRC.

Anecdotally, if a strict criteria were placed on assigning each remandee a diagnosis of some type, then by the very diagnostic criteria of the disorder, a minimum diagnosis of Anti-Social Personality Disorder could be assigned to almost every remandee due to their alleged offending. In isolation this diagnosis is clinically meaningless, and therefore, this is not done.

The issue of whether a remandee has a diagnosable "mental health condition" is not an easy concept to explain. Some remandees may have had a past history of a mental health condition, but are currently 'symptom free'. They are not therefore regarded as having a mental health condition. Additionally, the very terminology of "mental health condition" is open for interpretation. If the ACT Mental Health (Treatment and Care) Act 1994 criteria were used for determining if a remandee was suffering from a Mental Illness or Mental Dysfunction (and this is currently only done on specific request by either the Magistrate's Court or by referral from the Mental Health Tribunal), then each remandee would need to be comprehensively assessed, and this would be prohibitive in cost terms.

A figure, which may be of some use, is that of 'Occasions of Service (OOS)' which is a record of every interaction between a member of the Forensic Mental Health Service and, or on behalf of, a remandee....Some remandees require a greater degree of input than others do, but records of how many 'individual remandees' are included in the overall 'Occasions of Service' figures are not currently able to be extracted from the database. It is important to further qualify these figures however, as an 'Occasion of Service' on behalf of a remandee by the Forensic Mental Health Service does not necessarily suggest that they have a "mental health condition", and indeed an 'Occasion of Service' figure is recorded in the very process of determining such an answer.

There are a list of occasions of service, from July 2001 to March 2002. I will give you a copy of this, if you want one. They range from a low of 134 to a high of 379. I continue:

I will get my office to send you a copy.

Condom vending machines

MR CORBELL: Mr Speaker, in question time today, Ms Dundas asked me a question about condom vending machines in ACT government schools and colleges. I have further information for Ms Dundas.

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