Newsletters / Bulletins

I was very pleased to see the Productivity Commission release its position paper on NDIS Costs this week. For a long time now we have been talking about the risk of the NDIS becoming an oasis in the middle of a desert, and it appears our analogy has been acknowledged and heard.

When it comes to raising issues and making recommendations to government about the provision of services under the NDIS for people with psychosocial disabilities related to a mental health condition, we’ve weighed in heavily from the very beginning. We’ve always said the NDIS has great potential to improve the lives of a relatively small population of people with psychosocial disability who have historically missed out on the supports they need to live contributing lives. But we’ve also recognised a range of policy and operational issues around its implementation that simply must be addressed, and appreciate being able to make recommendations for the right change. So just recently, when we were given another opportunity for input, we enthusiastically provided more detail around our recommendation for a much-needed recovery oriented philosophy to be incorporated into the assessment process for access to the NDIS .

Many of us commenced the week confronted by the CCTV footage of Miriam Merten in such a distressed and distressing state in one of our mental health facilities.

Less than a week away from the Federal Budget and I thought it was a fitting time to look at just how far the mental health sector has come in the last 12 months. Last year, our expectations for the Budget were not very high, and we were not expecting many mental health specific initiatives from the 2016 Budget. As we now know, that is how the night panned out.