Mental Health Triage Service

Ms PRATT (Frome) (15:00): My question is to the Minister for Health and Wellbeing. Has the Mental Health Triage Service been put on a performance plan due to the abandonment of calls and, if so, have any issues been resolved? With your leave, sir, and that of the house, I will explain.

Leave granted.

Ms PRATT: On 11 July the Office of the Chief Psychiatrist advised by gazettal that multiple inspections had led Dr Brayley to trigger section 96 of the Mental Health Act by placing operational conditions on the service due to the abandonment of calls.

The Hon. C.J. PICTON (Kaurna—Minister for Health and Wellbeing) (15:01): Certainly there is work being done in terms of improving the arrangement for the Mental Health Triage Service. I understand that the improvements to date have already seen performance lifted from where they were under the previous government in terms of those key metrics—and I am happy to take on notice to provide those full statistics in relation to that—but we do want to see further improvement in terms of the Mental Health Triage Service.

We are currently working through the process of that, between the Central Adelaide Local Health Network and also working with the Barossa Hills Fleurieu Local Health Network that runs the regional version of the Mental Health Triage Service. I think one of the opportunities we are currently examining is whether we can bring those two services together to get greater efficiencies in terms of the staff and the resources and improvements in terms of response times for people who need that important service.