Submissions

The Community Mental Health and Wellbeing Sector has the potential to play a pivotal role in reducing the burden on the acute mental health system. Yet our funding structures remain heavily geared towards acute care and the provision of costly biomedical solutions. By contrast, funding for community managed NGOs – that are perfectly poised to respond to human distress earlier, more effectively and at a lower cost – remains woefully low.

In this pre-budget submission to the Queensland government’s June 2023-24 budget, QAMH calls on the government to:

1. Increase investment by a minimum of 48 per cent for non-government organisations in the Community Mental Health and Wellbeing Sector to bring it in line with other states, and the national per capita spend on mental health NGOs
2. Clarify how much of the $1.65 billion funding raised via the new Mental Health Levy is going to the Community Mental Health and Wellbeing Sector, and increase transparency around how mental health funding is allocated
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.