Newsletters / Bulletins

For Australia’s mental health sector the saying ‘change is the only constant’ rings very true, and is likely to do so for some time yet. We’re all doing our best to strike the right balance between getting on with the important job at hand, while also responding to changes, and preparing for what we know, or hope, is likely to come.

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.