28 March 2024
Category: Submissions
The Anti-Discrimination Act 1991 has been reviewed and QAMH welcomes the opportunity to provide comment on the new daft Bill. We agree that the Bill should reflect current best practice and provide a framework that proactively improves standards of behaviour across society. Our submission challenges the proposed definition of disability as we believe it contains stigmatising language. We also ask for measures to be taken to reduce complexity in the legislation making it easier for people to bring a case of discrimination forward.
6 March 2024
Category: Submissions
QAMH welcomes this opportunity to provide input to the Community Mental Health Community Support Services – Psychosocial Supports consultation being undertaken by Queensland Health to explore models, approaches and design elements that build on the current service system. We also welcome broad scale investment in non-clinical supports that build people’s natural resources and personal agency as well as their ability to reduce and resolve issues which may be impacting their mental health, by addressing social determinants.
7 February 2024
Category: Submissions
In mental health, we suggest that there is significant opportunity to maximise and grow our community-based mental health workforce which will not only complement and support the acute end of the system, but also provide early intervention opportunities in local communities that take pressure off the hospital system. In this submission to Queensland Health on the Health Workforce Strategy for Queensland to 2032, QAMH provided an approved draft copy of the Community Mental Health and Wellbeing Workforce Strategy 2024-2029 (the Strategy) to guide workforce planning, policy direction and funding priorities over the next five years.
16 November 2023
Category: Submissions
Queensland is meeting just 29.6 per cent of need for NGO-delivered psychosocial supports for people experiencing severe and complex mental distress. In this joint submission, QAMH, Arafmi Ltd and MHLEPQ call for an urgent minimum increase in recurrent funding of $151.3 million for the sector. Other priorities include investment to develop the capacity of the Community Mental Health and Wellbeing workforce, expanding social prescribing initiatives, more support for Specialist Homelessness Services and clarifying how mental health funding decisions are made.
8 November 2023
Category: Submissions
The Community Mental Health and Wellbeing Services funding landscape has seen many changes over the past decade, not least with the introduction of the NDIS, which has drastically concentrated funding for mental health services at the severe end of possible interventions for mental distress. In this submission, QAMH provides recommendations to assist the Department of Social Services to review grants funding processes and consider evidence-based approaches which can maximise mental health and wellbeing outcomes for all Australians.
25 October 2023
Category: Submissions
This submission offers achievable solutions which will ease the burden on clinical primary care and provide more sustainable outcomes for those currently missing out on care. We suggest that the large cohort of people experiencing mild-moderate mental illness who are reliant on access to primary care can be better supported by effectively resourcing and expanding contracting through Primary Health Networks, and shifting to a new model of care that utilises social prescribing by Community Mental Health and Wellbeing Sector link workers, in order to complement primary care services and reduce demand on General Practitioners (GPs) and Allied Health practitioners.