Page 715 - Week 03 - Tuesday, 5 April 2022
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There is $9 million to enhance child and family mental health initiatives to improve access to multidisciplinary team care to children, in line with the national Head to Health kids hub model. These enhancements will support more than 2,500 children and their families each year. There is $9.5 million to enhance the existing headspace centre to increase access to multidisciplinary youth mental health services in the ACT and to establish a multidisciplinary early intervention service to support young people at risk of developing mental health concerns.
There is $6 million to establish universal aftercare services in the ACT and to support people following a suicide attempt or experiencing a suicidal crisis. There is $2.8 million to improve perinatal mental health screening and enhance the capture and reporting of nationally consistent perinatal mental health data. And there is $1.9 million to deliver a community-based early intervention service for eating disorders to promote help-seeking behaviour and early intervention treatment for people in the early stages of developing an eating disorder and those with an eating disorder of low to moderate severity.
In addition to these initiatives, the commonwealth and ACT governments will substantially deepen their partnership in the mental health and suicide prevention system, through greater data-sharing and evaluation of services, closer integration of referral pathways, and working together on the regional planning and commissioning of services. The bilateral agreement will also build and support the mental health and suicide prevention workforce, including the peer workforce. This agreement considers, and acts upon, key mental health reports and inquiries, including recommendations from the Productivity Commission’s inquiry into mental health and the National Suicide Prevention Adviser’s final advice.
I would like to provide a little more detail about some of the important initiatives in this bilateral agreement. As I mentioned earlier, the agreement includes $9.5 million for increased access to multidisciplinary youth mental health services in the ACT through headspace centres, and to establish a multidisciplinary early intervention service to support young people at risk of developing mental health concerns.
The 2020 Review of children and young people in the ACT, the children and young people in the missing middle report of 2022, the Standing Committee on Education, Employment and Youth Affairs inquiry into youth mental health in the ACT of 2020, and the Review of the service system and implementation requirements for raising the minimum age of criminal responsibility in the ACT final report of 2021 detail the importance of earlier support, the need to make services more accessible and integrated, and the current gaps in services for the 12- to 18-year-old age group in the ACT.
A six-month scoping project undertaken in 2021 provided detailed advice on an evidence-based response to meet the needs of young people identified in these reports. This scoping work included an environmental scan, evidence review and broad consultation across more than 70 ACT agencies.
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