AN opportunity to rebuild Victoria’s broken mental health system will be missed if the Andrews Labor Government refuses to support crucial reforms to unlock thousands of extra workers for the exhausted and under-resourced workforce.
And it is regional students, regional children, who will be paying the price after the Royal Commission into Mental Health confirmed the many serious deficiencies in our mental health system.
The Royal Commission delivered its final report 12 months ago, but the shortcomings started well before then. In the three years since its interim report was presented, the many problems it identified have now worsened because of pandemic uncertainty and isolation.
Labor has been in government for 19 of the past 23 years. In that time, it has wilfully ignored dozens of reports that screamed for change to remake Victoria’s broken mental health system.
Including the 2019 interim report identifying severe deficiencies in the mental health workforce needing immediate attention.
But three years and six COVID lockdowns later, the problems have deteriorated dramatically while, instead of supporting reform that will immediately unlock more mental health workers to support Victorians, the Labor Government is actively stonewalling them.
Five of the nine Royal Commission interim recommendations highlighted the immediate need to develop and grow Victoria’s mental health workforce.
But the government failed to plan for future needs, leaving unsupported workers overwhelmed by skyrocketing demand in the pandemic.
Last year, the Liberals and Nationals moved legislative amendments to unlock an additional 2000 tertiary qualified counsellors to work as mental health practitioners (MHP) in Victorian public schools, but Labor voted against it.
We have also proposed other changes to funding criteria that will immediately add a further 2000 psychologists-in-training for the mental health workforce.
Changes also blocked by the Labor Government.
Our public schools are ideally placed to help support better mental wellbeing of students struggling after the isolation of lockdown, but there’s not enough workers to deliver it.
In many regional areas, counsellors are the only mental health support available – but without these crucial reforms, schools can’t employ them as MHP.
Victorians need mental health support right now as we recover and rebuild – it will be too late for too many to wait years to get the mental health support they need today.
