Page 4107 - Week 13 - Thursday, 6 December 2007
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The amendments will enable more flexible mental health services for people subject to mental health orders who move across the ACT-New South Wales border to places close to the border. A prime example of this would be an ACT resident moving to Queanbeyan. Generally, mental health services would provide mental health treatment and care across a border for a person on a community-based mental health order to provide continuity of care while negotiating the transfer of care to the local mental health service.
On occasion, an ACT mental health order may be appropriate for a New South Wales resident when the person has long-term and regular engagements in the ACT. For example, it may be appropriate for the ACT to provide mental health services to a forensic mental health consumer who moves residence from the ACT to nearby New South Wales and returns regularly to the ACT for court-related purposes and who warranted an ACT community-based psychiatric treatment order while residing in the ACT.
The other amendments to the act as laid out in the bill are minor and technical in nature and do not alter the current intentions of the act. The amendment to section 119 reflects the changing workforce in the delivery of mental health care. The current section reads: “A person is not eligible for appointment as a mental health officer unless a person is a mental health nurse, authorised nurse practitioner, psychologist or social worker.”
The ACT’s Chief Psychiatrist, Dr Peggy Brown, has requested that the Assembly amend section 119(2) of the act to include occupational therapists as clinicians able to be appointed as mental health officers. Currently, occupational therapists are employed as mental health clinicians working in the community and, on occasions, in the mental health crisis assessment and treatment team. Occupational therapists are currently not able to be appointed as mental health officers under the act. This limits the ability of OTs to fully exercise clinical mental health responsibilities. The government, in presenting this amendment, acknowledges the role that this profession adds to the overall clinical services for people who have mental illnesses.
As I informed the Assembly during my presentation speech, the full review of the act is continuing. On 13 November, Mr Corbell and I agreed to the release of the mental health act review options paper. The release of the options paper continues the review of the act begun in August 2006. Minister Corbell and I will be releasing that options paper shortly.
I again thank members for their assistance in debating this bill in a shorter than usual time frame. I thank Mrs Burke and Dr Foskey for attending those briefings and allowing the quick passage of this bill.
Question resolved in the affirmative.
Bill agreed to in principle.
Leave granted to dispense with the detail stage.
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