Page 4372 - Week 12 - Tuesday, 13 October 2009
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teams and care coordinators to honour the terms of these agreements. At the moment we do have the legislative basis for advance agreements, but they only operate when a consumer has full decision-making capacity. A review of the mental health act will not occur until the end of 2011.
The recently highly distressing situation involving the treatment of a person with severe mental illness, where the case ended up being decided through the courts, highlighted the importance of having consumer-led advance directives in place which are recognised. We also recommended that advance agreements be recorded on the Mental Health ACT computer system, also known as MHAGIC, or in some other repository agreeable to consumers and Mental Health ACT. In my previous work with the Mental Health Council of Australia, the council conducted workshops across Australia with mental health carers, and in these workshops advance directives were again raised as a significant issue to be addressed.
As I mentioned earlier, breaking down silos in service delivery is a major issue. The way services are delivered impacts on both consumers and carers in being able to navigate the system of service delivery. We should be developing outcome measurements and quality standards to be used across government and community sector services in collaboration with government, non-government services, the community sector, consumers and carers. This would demonstrate and measure if services are in fact leading to changes and positive impacts for consumers.
Finally, in relation to current plans for the ACT, the latest mental health services plan was a great step forward in that it had a focus on the recovery model with greater community participation and it also provided targets, which are extremely important to have in any plan. In fact, the plan did echo many of the statements made in the ACT Greens paper and also responded to the Greens’ motion on the draft plan.
How well the plan is implemented will depend on the Strategic Oversight Group, including what programs they and the Minister for Health recommend to fund. It will also be influenced by the level of commitment by all those involved to adopting a consumer-centred and recovery-focused model of service delivery, which is something peak mental health groups, consumers and carers have been calling for for quite some time.
MR HANSON (Molonglo) (4.05): I thank Ms Porter for raising this matter of public importance today and I also thank the minister and Ms Bresnan, who have both spoken well and raised some good issues in relation to this. It is one of those issues on which we have a shared aspiration, I believe, in this place to do more to reduce the stigma that those who suffer from a mental illness suffer and to do more to increase services across the community. I think we would all acknowledge, though, that more needs to be done and, although there will obviously be some disagreements in terms of how that is delivered and what actually is being delivered, I certainly acknowledge the shared commitment from those in the Assembly.
Last week was Mental Health Week 2009. It ran from 4 to 10 October and the theme this year was mental health and primary care, enhancing treatment and promoting mental health. Many of us went to a number of the various functions and events which
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