Page 1555 - Week 05 - Tuesday, 8 May 2018
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Work is underway to have key governance and evaluation frameworks in place and we will keep working with the community as the office and its work plan take shape. I also anticipate that the role of the office will continue to evolve over time; so there will be some flexibility built into the model.
We are establishing the office for mental health and wellbeing to be an agent for change in the ACT. It will be designed so that it has the influence and resources to identify opportunities for quality improvement across the continuum of mental health care and then support the responsible agencies to address these issues.
I also want to take this opportunity to respond to some of the claims that have been made in this place about the time frame for establishing the office. Unfortunately, assertions from the opposition that the office should have been established within 100 days of the last election are not only unrealistic but it was never a commitment that I or the government made.
What we did commit to was starting work on the office within 100 days, which we have done. I have already outlined the consultation process we have gone through. In undertaking this process we have sought to balance the need to get the office established with the need to seek input from across the sector and develop a model that will meet the needs of the ACT community. I am confident that the final report meets that balance and we are now actively working to have the office in place by 1 July this year.
The second matter that I want to update the Assembly on is what the ACT government is doing to simplify the navigation of the mental health services system for people in the ACT. Like most healthcare systems, Canberra’s mental health system has developed incrementally and organically to respond to the needs of the day. This means that as it has changed to meet the ACT’s growth over time, there has not always been a coordinated or integrated approach guiding the development of services.
This is not a Canberra-specific problem; rather it is a challenge for all advanced healthcare systems. It is also worth acknowledging the additional complexity that the introduction of the NDIS has brought to the mental health service system. The recent Mind the gap report from Community Mental Health Australia and the University of Sydney highlighted that despite its potential the current structure of the NDIS does not fit easily with the lived experience of people with psychosocial disability.
Currently, ACT Health provides additional funding for psychosocial supports for people with a mental illness outside the NDIS, but we know that there are people who continue to fall through the gaps. Both the ACT and commonwealth governments are aware of this issue and are working together to improve funding and coordination of psychosocial supports.
Additionally, the recent review of national disability insurance scheme processes, Improving the NDIS participant and provider experience, released in February 2018, recognises a number of cohorts that need a tailored NDIS participant pathway, including participants with psychosocial disability.
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