Page 3654 - Week 12 - Tuesday, 28 October 2014
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Just because carers and people associated with people with mental illness can be, at times, difficult to communicate with, it does not make it any less important. Because a mum is experiencing her own form of anxiety or breakdown while trying to keep the show on the road for a very ill son, because people may not have perfect social skills, does not mean that they do not deserve respect. I hate to think of the cost to government if carers stopped doing what they were doing, providing financial, social and other care for their loved ones sometimes well into their later years.
These people have often been very distressed themselves by the relatives they care for. They have sat on the couch at night wondering if their 40 year-old-son will ever go to sleep. They have spent years wondering what will happen to their loved one when they die. They deserve our utmost respect. They deserve a medal and a red carpet. Instead, what they tend to get is a cold shoulder in our system. This bill does not address the gaping hole which is maximising information to them.
I look forward to a time when the principles included in the bill of including carers, which is mentioned briefly, are fully utilised and incorporated in the way legislation is applied and when the policies and practices in the system are addressed and culture is considerably adapted, because we neglect the questions and information that carers have need for at our own peril.
Despite the extraordinarily long time this bill has taken to come before us, the consultation process was deep but also not without its flaws. In an earlier draft form of the bill the government were trying to push ambulance paramedics to arrest and to have the capacity to frisk mental health clients, from my understanding. They did not feel their safety should be compromised and it is a credit to the Transports Workers Union for having the courage to fight the government on this issue.
The government has done a complete backflip pretty much and the current position in the bill giving some senior ambulance officers the power to state that they have the legal right to require that a patient come with them to the hospital as a verbal measure is much more sensible. They are not police. Ambulance paramedics are not trained to deal with arresting people and should not be expected to do this on the job. They join as a paramedic to be in a therapeutic and caring role, not a policing role. The ambos were initially expected to act like justice officers when dealing with clients out in the community, yet a similar issue is brewing with regard to staff at the yet to be constructed secure mental health unit.
I will go into more detail on this shortly. However, I need only say that, while the ambulance employees have the assistance of the Transport Workers Union in fighting off this government’s over-the-top ideas, the as-yet, not-engaged staff of the secure mental health unit have no such lobby group yet and I am sure we will deal with the concerns facing them once the new facility opens if, indeed, it opens in time in 2016.
Despite the differing views of various elements across the mental health sector there is one matter on which there seems to be unanimous agreement. That is quite rare but it has happened. Everyone agrees that a seven-year consultation process is baffling. The preparation of this bill has been glacially slow. The Eiffel Tower only took two years
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