Page 2364 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 2 August 2017

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The hub has been rigorously researched, including through the use of services’ and service users’ insights. The detailed insights being gathered will directly inform its design. Questions have been asked like “How might we work with the whole family, not just the victim and the perpetrator?” and “How might we better coordinate ACT government services to provide a value add to non-government services?” There are also questions like “How might we break through the barriers for people to access the service they need?” and “How might the design of the hub have a safety focus and not a crisis focus?” The insights include identifying a need for early intervention responses, understanding that some people experiencing domestic and family violence are seeking options to end violence that do not involve family separation, and understanding that some people fear a response when they engage with the system.

The final hub pilot design will be the result of a highly consultative co-designed process to which all key services and a range of service users have provided input. The hub pilot will be evaluated to ensure that desired outcomes are being achieved. The pilot will be refined, pending the results of the evaluation process.

ACT Health—opioid treatment review

MR DOSZPOT: My question is to the Minister for Corrections. Minister, I refer to an article in the Canberra Times of 25 July 2017 in relation to a review of the guidelines governing opioid maintenance treatment in the ACT. This review was scheduled to be completed in 2012, but five years later it has still not been completed. On ABC radio on 27 July 2017, you stated that ACT Health had dropped the ball in its handling of this review. Minister, who is ultimately responsible for this review being five years overdue?

MR RATTENBURY: Yes, those are comments that I made. It is disappointing that this work has not been done. It is a fact—I have also said this publicly—that ultimately the Minister for Health has responsibility for these guidelines but I have also been very clear, given my interest in corrections, that we will jointly work together on making sure that this gets dealt with. It needs to be done.

What I have also been very clear to say—in the interview on ABC the other day I made this point very clearly—is that Justice Health has not stood still during this five year period. As the Minister for Health has very clearly explained today, these are overarching guidelines. Beneath that, operational practices are updated continually. I can inform the Assembly, as I have informed the public through my media interviews, that a range of improvements have been made by staff at the operational level to the methadone program at the Alexander Maconochie Centre.

These have been the results of quality improvement activity throughout 2016-17. I am happy to detail to members what those particular improvements are but they go to issues of staff training, they go to issues of the timing of delivery of methadone and the like. So I think it is very important to be clear that while the guidelines have continued to be the 2012 guidelines, operational practices have been updated in that time frame.


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