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Legislative Council - Fifty-First Parliament, Second Session (51-2)
2007-11-20 Daily Xml
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MENTAL HEALTH RESPONSE SERVICES

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER (14:53): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before asking the Minister for Mental Health and Substance Abuse a question about response services for mental health emergencies.

Leave granted.

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER: People with mental illnesses can be seen to be some of the most vulnerable people in our community. When there is a mental health emergency in the community, the responsiveness of services can be critical to providing the right support for mental health consumers, families and carers. Will the minister inform the council of any recent initiative to improve response services for mental health emergencies in South Australia?

The Hon. G.E. GAGO (Minister for Environment and Conservation, Minister for Mental Health and Substance Abuse, Minister Assisting the Minister for Health) (15:29): I thank the honourable member for his most important question and for his ongoing and very active interest in these important policy areas. I am pleased to inform the council that South Australia will lead the nation when an improved response service for mental health emergency commences next month. These service improvements came about after a pilot project was introduced to test different types of service models. The new service will consist of a centralised call centre within the SA Ambulance Service Emergency Operation Centre, and will coordinate the emergency response previously overseen by four separate metropolitan sites.

The changes will help free up important clinical resources across metropolitan Adelaide, such as nurses and other mental health workers, and enable them to focus on their clinical work and operations, particularly their preventative work out in the field. It will get them off the phone and out helping people. These improvements are funded by the state government's $2 million injection for emergency mental health services. This model has many benefits for ambulance and mental health services and, importantly, for mental health consumers and carers and, of course, their families.

Callers to 000, who are seeking mental health advice or assistance, will be given prioritised treatment over the telephone and, where appropriate, will be transferred to the new call centre. The 24-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week model is backed by dedicated community teams to provide a rapid response when necessary. This will provide a more rapid response to mental health emergencies, as well as allowing ambulance workers and police to concentrate on their call services, hoping to reduce the number of unnecessary callouts and involvement of those other support services.

Additional benefits to callers include the direct links by the call centre to ambulance or police if there is a serious medical risk or the need for support in violent situations. In the past three weeks, clinicians appointed to the new service have been taking part in a comprehensive training course to equip them with the necessary skills to provide this world-class service. Each vehicle used by the rapid response teams will be fitted with a state-of-the-art GPS navigational system, and this ensures that the location of the teams is known by the call centre at all times, so that in the case of emergency assistance it can be directed to the exact location by the closest team.

The new service is the result of collaboration between SA Ambulance Service, Central Northern Adelaide Health Service, and Southern Adelaide Health Service. I would like to take this opportunity to thank all those involved in developing this improved service. We know that people with a mental illness are, as my colleague the Hon. Ian Hunter said, some of the most vulnerable people living in our communities. These changes to our existing services aim to provide a faster and more consistent response to treatment and care at all times of the day, every day.

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