Page 242 - Week 01 - Thursday, 12 February 2015
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The new act also advances the statutory options and protections for people who are affected by mental health services and provides for the first time new forensic orders to help ensure access and oversight of treatment for people with mental illness involved in our justice system. We will be undertaking education, training and the provision of plain English explainers to help mental health consumers, carers and their service providers understand what this new law means for them when it comes into effect later this year.
The government is also identifying and responding to an issue that has been on my agenda for some time—providing support for those who are caught up in the emotional, difficult and often traumatic circumstances of a coronial investigation. The government has committed funding for a new coronial counselling service. This fills a big gap in services. The coronial counselling service will provide therapeutic counselling to people who have been bereaved by the death of a loved one that is being investigated by the coroner. The coronial counselling service will offer counselling for the whole period that the coronial investigation is underway. All too often with an unexpected death, family and friends are left isolated and alone during the difficult circumstances of a coronial investigation. This new counselling service is something I think we can be particularly proud of because it helps fill a gap in a very important area of service delivery.
Equally, the government has committed ongoing funding for the “let’s talk for suicide prevention” campaign. The aim of this campaign is to say to people that it is okay to talk about suicide, both to seek help and to offer help to others. In 2015 the focus of the campaign is around World Suicide Prevention Day on 10 September this year, and it will be on groups at higher risk of suicide in our community. ACT Health will support community organisations working with these groups to run suicide prevention education, and in 2015 we will also partner with the Education and Training Directorate to run a competition for high school students to develop new suicide prevention messages for print, radio, TV and web broadcast. I hope we are able to use the winning entries in future years’ campaigns.
Nationally, on 1 July last year the ACT commenced the trial of the NDIS. We know what the scheme will do—provide people with disabilities, including psychosocial disabilities—the opportunity to purchase services that are tailored to their needs. Very small numbers of people with psychosocial disability have been assessed for this scheme in the ACT, but we will continue to monitor what it means for them as the scheme is rolled out. We will also monitor the implementation to make sure that no person currently receiving a government-funded mental health support service is disadvantaged by the implementation of the NDIS.
Finally, I turn to our performance in the areas of the Report on Government Services. This report was released earlier this month, and I am pleased the report shows that, across a whole range of our health services, we are continuing to make good progress in providing quality healthcare services. While we continue to tackle challenges such as the increasing demand for emergency and elective surgery services, the report is a timely reminder of the complexity and the diversity of the health services Canberrans seek on a daily basis.
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