Page 2678 - Week 08 - Thursday, 24 August 2006
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problems. There is increasing evidence of demonstrable links between oral health and long-term physical health.
While much of the blame for such a decline in public dental health services has to be attributed to the commonwealth, it is the ACT health system that ultimately bears the cost of this area of neglect, and improvements will ultimately benefit that same system. We are not saving any money in the long run by failing to provide adequate dental services. The cost will come back to us down the line.
I touch on the defunding of CAHMA and how the government handled the situation. I can understand the government’s right to withdraw funding from an organisation, but I cannot understand the manner in which they tried to have CAHMA evicted from the Griffin Centre when CAHMA’s name was on the lease. During the final week of CAHMA’s funding, ACT Health, Directions and two lawyers apparently turned up at the Griffin Centre, instructing the centre to have CAHMA evicted so that Directions could take over the space. They were quickly rebuked by the centre’s board, and quite rightly.
ACT Health’s actions were inappropriate and damaging to its reputation, as were its behind-the-doors negotiations with Directions to take on the role of providing the one and only needle service exchange in Civic. Why did the government not do a legitimate tender for the service, rather than going straight to Directions? As a result of the government’s action, Civic faces the threat of having no peer-provided needle exchange service and perhaps no primary needle exchange service at all.
The government can talk about the secondary and the tertiary outlets of pharmacies and vending machines, but these are not the face-to-face services that deal with the other complexities that drug injectors must deal with. I will continue to watch this area closely and certainly hope that we do not see a repeat of this approach.
It is also worth pointing out that drug and alcohol community organisations lack a peak body, and recent attempts to get funding for one have been unsuccessful. Apparently $50,000 was earmarked for such a body, but ACT Health convened a meeting of CEOs of key drug and alcohol organisations, many of which do not provide drug and alcohol services as a core priority. This group decided that the funding should not be allocated and, even more alarmingly, told CADAC, the coalition of drug and alcohol community organisations, to close. But they could not make the coalition do this, as they had no authority to do so. Events such as these are a timely reminder of the difficulty working in this area and the need for the government to make concerted efforts to get it right.
While the ACT government’s approach to improving dual diagnosis services remains questionable in this budget, I was very pleased to hear Dr Brown speak about her intentions to improve Mental Health ACT’s dealings in this area. There remain a number of people within our community who cannot access mental health or drug and alcohol services because they present illnesses within both fields.
At the moment, there is only one person within Mental Health ACT who undertakes assessments for clients on their substance use, provides input to development of management plans with their case managers and up-skills staff on management issues for clients with dual diagnosis. But when 75 per cent of the services are provided by community health organisations, it is hard to know what leadership the government is
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