published letters

Published in the Age on Tuesday, December 1, 2015

Money, the bottom line

The federal government’s changes to how mental health care is delivered are indeed welcome although somewhat belated (Editorial, 30/11). But there is no new funding to enable the changes to be implemented.

Community organisations called primary health care networks are charged with implementing the changes. However, these are less than two years old and already have a huge agenda integrating other medical services on an unchanged budget.

No national benchmarking is suggested by the government to guide the implementation and no extra funds are provided to collect the data on how well the changes work. While the new direction will form a basis for future improvements, one might view this unfunded announcement as a way of getting mental health off the agenda for next year’s election.

Tim Woodruff