Page 3707 - Week 12 - Thursday, 22 November 2007
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Recommendation 2 deals with privacy. That will be an ongoing issue for any of us in the community: where do we draw the line? It is very difficult for the government, and I do acknowledge that. But it can be an issue in giving help and support to those people who need it so desperately. We need a bipartisan approach to how we can better refine that. Often, things like obtaining mental health orders can be time consuming. We need to be able to act there and then. We need to be able to give people the immediate authority, be they housing officials or people from Mental Health ACT, to be able to help that person, and to seek the records they need in order to give that appropriate help. Recommendation 4 states:
The Committee recommends that Housing ACT develop a strategy to ensure that workers in community organisations assisting those with a mental health illness have an awareness and understanding of all Housing ACT policies in relation to mental health issues.
I note that the minister has said Housing ACT will provide opportunities for joint training. I would love to know more about that, when the minister is able to give further detail. It is very important that people are fully across it and that we have a much more streamlined and cohesive system involving Mental Health, the police and Housing. So I acknowledge that and thank the government, but I look forward to receiving more detail.
The “step-up and step-down” facility is mentioned in recommendation 7. The government have allocated $800,000 in funding for 24-hour “step-up and step-down”, but that represents support for young people of five places and adults of five places. Again, there is probably more that we need to do in terms of support for both age groups, but particularly for adults, from what I am hearing from the community.
With respect to recommendation 8, I think there has been a lot of crossover of information. Often people do not know where to go for that information. I note that the government has agreed to this recommendation, which states:
The Committee recommends that all relevant government agencies ensure that details of their full range of services and relevant contacts are available to the community in a readily accessible form.
I think that is the key. We have the wonderful contact book, which I fully support and use very often. We have the hotline, telephone information services, Parentline, Healthline and Lifeline. It seems to me that there are so many things happening and often people do not know quite where to go and who to talk to. I think we can somewhat refine that, and I am happy to work with the government on that as well.
With respect to recomendation 9, the government is going to get advice from the Government Solicitor’s office to progress the recommendation in regard to privacy issues. I am very pleased that the government is going to try and look at that issue in a more robust way.
With respect to recommendation 10, in terms of facilitating an amenable living environment for clients with a mental illness and their neighbours, who may be
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