Page 2680 - Week 08 - Thursday, 24 August 2006
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We also support the broad objectives to improve consumer and carer participation, most especially the further development of early intervention prevention strategies. But I do not think they should have come at the expense of community-based services because this is where people recover. Unless we want a rotating system focused on crisis intervention where patients come in and out of acute care, we must invest in community-based strategies. In the current situation, where funding is tight, we need to find innovative ways to provide these services.
For this reason, I seek leave to table an ACT Greens discussion paper titled “Making our own boundaries, not living in your walls—is a model like Trieste an option for supporting people with mental illness in Canberra?”
Leave granted.
DR FOSKEY: I present the following paper:
Mental illness—“Making our own boundaries, not living in your walls”—Public discussion paper prepared by Fiona Tito Wheatland for the ACT Greens.
I want to make sure that Ms Gallagher and Mr Smyth, at least, receive a copy of that paper. This paper was written by Fiona Tito Wheatland, and I give great thanks to her for the unpaid time and effort she has put into it. Fiona was previously the Official Visitor for Mental Health in the ACT, chair of the Community and Health Rights Advisory Council and chair of the ATCOSS Health Policy Advisory Committee for five years. She is nationally recognised for her work on adverse events in hospitals and is currently completing her doctorate at the ANU on patient safety in healthcare. The paper is also being distributed for comment amongst a wide range of community mental health services, and we have been able to incorporate some of their comments.
We are committed to working with the mental health community to find innovative and cost-effective solutions to assist people with a mental health problem to recover and to remain healthy. Unless consumers and service providers work together, we will never get it right. We must realise that, as society changes, so will the needs of people living with a mental illness.
The ACT government has proposed to develop a new and larger acute mental care institution. I note that this proposal has been put off in this budget due to some disquiet amongst community organisations and the need for further consultation and negotiation. Community organisations are concerned that the new institution would be too much like the old PSU, leading to similar problems. I commend the government for listening to these concerns, although with a belt-tightening budget this could have been convenient.
During this debate it is worth questioning whether the ACT is moving in the right direction and is improving the rate at which its residents not only recover from a mental illness but also stay well. We must also question whether we are moving in a direction that is financially viable, given the growing health budget the ACT government is facing. For too long our models of care have been based on containment and control, an out-of-sight, out-of-mind approach. We have based our models of care on what the service providers wanted to provide rather than what the consumers needed to receive.
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