Page 1278 - Week 05 - Thursday, 4 June 2020
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
(e) admission and discharges to The Canberra Hospital and Calvary Hospital mental health units;
(f) capacity of the health system facilities;
(g) treatment of patients with mental health issues in ACT emergency departments;
(h) linkages that the mental health system has to other health services including alcohol and drug rehabilitation services;
(i) the way in which patient management is undertaken between agencies including ACT Health, Corrections Health, Community Services Directorate and the Ngunnawal Bush Healing Farm;
(j) models of care for mental health facilities and compliance with the relevant models of care;
(k) waiting times for acute mental health facilities;
(l) patient and staff safety issues;
(m) staff culture in the mental health system; and
(n) any other related issues …
A broad-ranging inquiry is proposed and does not relate simply to the acute mental health system. I am flabbergasted at the approach of Mr Rattenbury. I know Mr Rattenbury has to protect his patch. It is the Greens things. When Ms Bresnan was here she was very passionate about mental health and suicide prevention, in particular, and the Greens have long taken the view that they are the torchbearers for mental health.
However, the experiment of having a separate mental health minister and essentially Canberra Health Services and ACT Health having to answer to two ministers has not worked. It is a complicated system anyhow and having to report to two ministers, depending on where they are and what the issues are, is a fundamental failure and a fundamental breakdown in the system. It has not served the people of the ACT well.
Mr Rattenbury can say, “We’re doing fantastic things and we’re spending a lot of money on it.” The figures do not lie. While Mr Rattenbury has been the Minister for Mental Health he has overseen a decline a mental health, a decline in patient safety, a decline in staff safety. Quite frankly, there have been a number of occasions where Mr Rattenbury has been completely blindsided by how complex and difficult the mental health system is to manage. He has not been up to speed and not been agile enough to even address the issues of staff safety.
A number of times in this place we have been palmed off with “waiting for reports to come out” or strategies to be launched and the like. Strategies and reports that Mr Rattenbury is waiting for do not protect staff on a day-to-day basis from assault in very high risk areas.
We saw it today: there is a failure of management that a patient could be at such high risk and not have the lock on his door appropriately fixed. That went on for an
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video