Page 4369 - Week 12 - Tuesday, 13 October 2009
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
grouped around courtyards, each with their own access, and small lounges located to the bedrooms provide an option for quiet relaxation or specific use. In addition, the design will give us some flexibility about where women and men are located and I think it will significantly improve the quality of the inpatient environment.
The current concept design of the unit will be approximately 2½ times larger than the current psychiatric services unit. The unit will have large areas of open space for a walking track and other gardens for recreational use. The gardens will also create a visual buffer for the new unit and that is very important, as consumers and carers have told us, in terms of ensuring the privacy and protection of people using the facility and spending time in the facility but also as a kind of dislocation from the rest of the hospital campus.
The site selection process for the secure mental health unit, the community process, has finished and ACT Health are currently pulling together all of the information to brief cabinet on the preferred way forward with that facility.
We have seen significant increases in mental health funding. There has been a 183 per cent growth in funding for mental health services from 2001 to 2009-10, with the budget now in excess of $77.5 million. Of the health budget for recurrent mental health services in 2009-10, $10.2 million is provided to 27 community organisations to deliver essential services throughout the community. This is a high percentage when compared to the national average, but we have committed, again through the parliamentary agreement, to working to ensure that we continue to increase that sector’s capacity to deal with the changes in landscape of consumers and their care requirements.
Mental illness can have a profound impact on the lives of not only the individuals themselves but also their family members, their colleagues and the wider community. As members of this place we often receive correspondence—sometimes complaints but sometimes also appreciation—about the services provided across the mental health sector. Some of those letters are heart-rending in terms of the impact of the illness, particularly on individuals but also on their family and their friends. All of us, I know, would be touched by that correspondence and in a way it is certainly the feedback from the community that very much drives my passion to continue to improve services in the mental health area.
I am very keen to work with Assembly members to make sure that we have a flexible system that responds to change and responds to the increases in demand that we have seen but in a way that meets the needs of consumers and their carers. This is an area where, from my experience in health, the consumer and carer movement is very well organised in terms of representation, in terms of their involvement. I know in ACT Health we rely very heavily on the consumer-carer liaison role to assist us with deliberations as a government, and I know that the consumer community sector movement is very well organised as well and constantly gives me advice on things that we are doing right and things that we are not doing right, and it is a very important part of our response.
Our commitment to being flexible is reflected in the mental health services plan, which started off as a document that was not well received by the community but
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .