Page 3016 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 30 June 2010
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organisations. This year there is only $1 million. The parliamentary agreement also calls on the government to commit 30 per cent of mental health funds to non-government organisations providing mental health services.
Despite some new funds being allocated to this area, the government’s achievements on this target have remained at 13 per cent over the last two years. I note the strategic oversight group was not used this year to assist in advising on mental health budget priorities. I would hope to see the oversight group better utilised to examine funding options for mental health in the next budget.
There is certainly not a lack of ideas about where the gaps in services are. Those facts are well known and have been documented by the Greens in our discussion paper from last year and have been documented by community organisations in their budget submissions. We need specialist mental health legal services, community-based and provided after-hours crisis services, expansions of programs such as the housing and accommodation support imitative and a strengthened community sector workforce.
The ACT community sector has the highest turnover rate of any jurisdiction, and steps must be taken to address this. Peer support programs that seek to support people transitioning out of intensive acute and other mental health services, as proposed by Woden Community Services, are highly worthy of funding, and it is disappointing that this proposal was not successful this year.
The Greens are hopeful, as are many people in the mental health sector, that the government will apportion a significant number of the commonwealth’s grant of $26 million for an additional 22 sub-acute beds as community-based step-up, step-down beds. We want and expect to see a continued movement towards the target of 12 per cent for the health budget for mental health. This target is reflective of the level of need in the community. The recent discussion nationally has highlighted the neglect of mental health by successive governments across Australia over a number of years and we need to increase the focus on mental health as a priority if we are to make any difference to the lives of consumers and their carers and families.
The estimates committee report provided two recommendations with regard to mental health, which were: that the ACT government build growth funding into the formula for mental health funding, which is consistent with the reported growth in national mental health demand; and that the percentage of overall mental health funding allocated to community organisations be reported in the annual budget papers.
The government responded to the first recommendation, stating that it has made significant investment in mental health, which is true, but it has mainly been in capital works for acute services. It is now time to start turning attention to those services provided by the non-government sector and assisting in preventing the cycle of crisis which results from a person with a severe mental illness going in and out of hospital.
The government also noted that a fixed annual increase is not the most appropriate approach. This recommendation states that funding be determined in relation to the demand, which in fact is not a fixed amount but an amount which addresses the needs of the community at a point in time and is based upon what the need is. I am pleased to see that the government has agreed to the second recommendation, which will see
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