Submissions

In this joint pre-budget submission to the Queensland government’s 2024-2025 budget, QAMH, Arafmi Ltd and MHLEPQ call on the Government to:

1. Increase recurrent investment by an additional $151.3 million for non-government organisations in the Community Mental Health and Wellbeing Sector to fund the critical gap in state-funded psychosocial supports for severe and complex mental illness. This investment should ensure broad access to psychosocial supports that reflect the full spectrum of support needs within the community including for people experiencing severe mental distress, as well as their families and informal/unpaid carers.
2. Allocate funding to implement the following elements of the Community Mental Health and Wellbeing Sector Workforce Strategy:
   1. Fund QAMH to oversee and deliver the components of the strategy that develop our capacity building role with the sector. The cost of these parts of the strategy is $5 million over the 5 year life of the strategy (i.e. $1 million per year, indexed annually)
   2. Establish a Chief Lived Experience Officer, Mental Health role as recommended by Mental Health Lived Experience Peak (MHLEPQ) within Queensland Health which is tasked with development of the lived experience workforce across the whole service system. This officer could drive the identified lived experience components of the Community Mental Health and Wellbeing Workforce Strategy but also have a remit for all parts of the system (clinical as well).
3. Consider existing social prescribing models and their feasibility for a state-wide trial reflecting Recommendation 7 from Queensland’s Parliamentary Inquiry into Social Isolation and Loneliness in Queensland and allocate new funding to expand social prescribing trial sites that explore locally responsive models, especially in regional Queensland.
4. Increase investment by a minimum of 60% per cent for Community Mental Health and Wellbeing Sector organisations delivering specialist homelessness services (SHS) to bring funding in line with the national per capita spend on SHS, and increased demand on these services.
5. Increase transparency in the allocation of mental health funding by clarifying how much of the $1.65 billion funding raised via the new Mental Health Levy (the Levy) is going to the Community Mental Health and Wellbeing Sector, providing publicly available quarterly reports on monies collected by the Levy and clarifying how mental health funding decisions are made.