Wednesday, 30 October 2024

Mental health workers

Tim READ (Brunswick) (19:13): (897) My adjournment matter is for the Minister for Industrial Relations. As part of the negotiations of the Victorian Public Mental Health Services Enterprise Agreement 2020–2024 a memorandum of understanding was executed between the department, the Victorian Hospitals Industrial Association and unions to deliver a further 800 mental health worker positions across all area mental health services. This promise was welcomed by unions as a positive sign of the government’s commitment to improving Victoria’s mental health system. In particular providing these 800 positions would go a long way to ensuring that our bed-based mental health services would no longer be understaffed and overloaded. Unfortunately right now there are not enough mental health workers employed in bed-based services, which means the existing workers are overstretched, unsafe and unsupported.

In turn, without adequate staffing, people seeking urgent mental health support are often unable to get personalised care when they need it. I understand that earlier this month the government said they would no longer be fulfilling this promise and would instead be directing a smaller number of new mental health staff, mostly to the new mental health and wellbeing locals. While it is important to support the locals and indeed to roll out the rest of the locals without further delay, as we saw in the last state budget, this does not help mental health workers in our existing bed-based services. If we cannot get our bed-based services right, it is impossible for the mental health system as a whole to function properly. I am told that currently acutely unwell people are going to the locals which on occasion are not able to meet their needs, and so those people get referred to the emergency department, but they cannot get admitted there because of insufficient staff in mental health wards, and they end up going back to the locals, and the cycle continues.

With adequately staffed and resourced bed-based services, people seeking mental health services could get treatment when they need it and the currently overworked staff would be sharing their excess clinical load with 800 other qualified workers across the state. Minister, the action I seek is for the government to keep their promise to the mental health workforce and unions and to demonstrate their ongoing commitment to improving Victoria’s mental health system by urgently implementing these missing 800 positions as agreed in the last EBA.