system reform

“We will reap what we sow,” Frank Quinlan, CEO of Mental Health Australia, said today at the launch of the 2015 Intergenerational Report at Parliament House in...

Mental Health Australia today welcomed the release of the McClure Review of Australia’s Welfare System - A New System for Better Employment and Social Outcomes. “This much awaited report brings welcome attention to some of the systems that support Australians with mental illness,” Mental Health Australia CEO Frank Quinlan said today. “But as Patrick McClure has said before, we cannot consider the welfare system without consideration of the system that provides recovery support.”

Mental Health Australia is calling on the Federal Government to commit to a ten year program of action to reform mental health. This follows the release of Mental Health Australia’s final submission to the National Mental Health Commission’s Review of Mental Health Services and Programmes, our Blueprint for Action on Mental Health. This reform agenda will take at least ten years of careful, dedicated and planned action. With the current review now nearly over, and with enormous public support for system reform, we must seize this opportunity to undertake a period of well-targeted action

Mental Health Australia has released its Blueprint for Action on Mental Health. The product of extensive sector engagement, the Blueprint is Mental Health Australia’s fourth and final submission to the National Mental Health Commission’s Review of Mental Health Services and Programmes.

This document outlines some of the key issues for the mental health sector, including consumers and carers in the Interim Report of the Reference Group on Welfare Reform to the Minister for Social Services (The McClure Report) including: changes to eligibility for the Disability Support Pension, a proposal to reduce the number of payments, a measure to address the gap between the full rate of pensions and allowances, proposed changes to the Care Payment and Carer Allowance, a summary of the report’s sections on mental health and employment, proposals around early intervention and ‘high risk groups’ and a summary of what the report had to say about the role of the NDIS in increasing economic and social participation by people with disabilities and carers.

This is the third submission from the Mental Health Council of Australia ( MHCA ) to the National Mental Health Commission ( NMHC ) to inform the NMHC ’s current review of mental health programmes. It articulates the MHCA ’s priorities for the mental health system going forward. The contents are informed by detailed consultations with consumers and carers and other mental health stakeholders and proposes priorities and actions to drive long term policy and systemic reforms