The Royal Commission into Victoria’s mental health system aims to provide a set of actions that will change Victoria’s mental health system and improve the supports available to people experiencing mental health challenges.
The Commission have called for submissions from individuals, the sector and the broader community on ways to improve.
Neami National has made a formal submission to the Royal Commission, outlining our vision for reform.
Central to Neami’s submission is the belief in a mental health system that operates in alignment with the identified needs and wishes of the people the system exists to serve, and works collaboratively in cross-sector collective action to address identified needs.
The Neami submission included proposed solutions and areas of reform, including the need to:
- Address identified unmet consumer needs, placing the consumer and the community at the centre of the service system
- Invest in essential community-based mental health models that complement hospital-based and clinical services, and enable the provision of robust community outreach
- Align the mental health system to accommodate a robust CMO sector and workforce, including a peer workforce
- Support people experiencing severe mental ill-health to enter into open employment through evidence-based supported employment models (such as IPS).
- Provide cross-sector, collective action approaches to addressing complex needs, that address mental health, homelessness, housing, justice, AOD, employment and education outcomes
You can find Neami’s submission below. For more information about the Royal Commission, visit https://rcvmhs.vic.gov.au/.