Page 3150 - Week 09 - Tuesday, 22 August 2017
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to their overall mental health. This means working with children and young people not only at early signs of concern but in the early stages of their lives to support their mental health and wellbeing. I am pleased to say that in this budget, in line with parliamentary agreement items and Labor’s election commitments, we will fund the expansion of counselling services for children, improve hospital-based services for young people and provide more support to community providers to deliver early intervention programs.
The Child Adolescent and Mental Health Service, or CAMHS, consultation liaison service provides assessment and referrals to appropriate mental health services. CAMHS clinicians also work closely with families and carers to provide information and advice to support adolescents admitted to hospital. This expansion means that these important services will now be available to young people, their families and carers on weekends, as well as the previous service provided during the week.
We are expanding the CAMHS primary school intervention program, providing enhanced case management and coordination of support services for primary school children aged five to 12 years. This expansion will provide counselling services to more primary school aged children who are showing early signs of common mental health concerns such as depression, anxiety and body image issues. The budget includes $400,000 to support the headspace program to provide mental health services to young people aged between 18 and 25 years who are experiencing a mild to moderate mental health condition.
It is also a government commitment to address the important challenge of suicide prevention wherever possible. Each attempted or completed suicide in this city takes a toll on our community, rippling through families, workplaces and groups of friends. There is no single answer to combating suicide but each step forward in improving services, each conversation had with someone in distress, is a step closer to potentially saving a life. We are investing more in reducing the incidence of suicide in our community by working with partners, including through the Black Dog Institute and the way back program.
With this budget the government is also investing to increasing targeted mental health services, with more support for pregnant women and new mothers and also older Canberrans. There are a range of initiatives in this budget that seek to provide a targeted service to specific demographics of need. It is about recognising that the focus of those services can be different on each occasion and is designed to respond to the specific circumstances, be it older Canberrans, people with perinatal mental health concerns and similar areas, to ensure that the focus is there.
I will speak briefly to justice health today. I will also come back to some comments that have been made in the speeches from those in the opposition today, because justice health is a key area of service delivery for those in our justice system. Justice health service is a program within mental health, justice health and alcohol and drug services and is responsible for the provision of health care to people within correctional facilities in the territory. Providing better health care is a crucial part of the government’s commitment to overcoming disadvantage.
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