A mental health response service, combining police, paramedics and clinicians will receive continued funding in the upcoming ACT budget.
The Police, Ambulance, Clinician Emergency Response program, known as PACER, will be funded to continue providing a second response team for the next four years. The team travels in an unmarked police car to respond to mental health incidents in the territory.
The territory government will also continue to fund the youth mental health WOKE program, which is focused on early intervention and uses dialectical behaviour therapy to treat young people aged 15 to 21 who experience self-harming behaviour, suicidal ideation and early signs of borderline personality disorder.
The WOKE program, run by University of Canberra clinical psychology masters students and educators, was faced with the prospect of closing last year after federal funding was withdrawn. The ACT government stepped in to fund the service and the territory has confirmed it will continue funding for another year.
The funding is part of a $15 million package for community mental health services in the budget.
Minister for Mental Health Emma Davidson said the government was focused on early intervention services to help people receive support in the community.
"We're really maintaining that focus on trying to deliver mental health supports to people in the community, closer to home, helping them to be able to stay engaged in all the other things that look after their mental wellbeing rather than having the disruption of inpatient stays and things like that," she said.
"We know the earlier people can get access to supports, the better their life outcomes are going to be so that's why we're continuing to really push for more and more supports to be delivered that way."
PACER has been permanently funded to have one team with funding for the second team being handed out year-to-year. The government has provided greater certainty in this budget with the second team to be funded for four years at a cost of $7.6 million. Police have previously urged the government to expand the service.
Ms Davidson also urged the Commonwealth to restart funding for the WOKE program. The program will receive a share of $1.6 million over the next year for community child and youth mental health programs.
"Those programs do things that no other health service in the ACT would be able to do for those really at-risk young people," she said.
"It's really important that when we've got a program we know works that we ensure that it continues. That should have been done by the Commonwealth and it wasn't but the ACT government is not going to leave those people stranded.
"The Commonwealth really needs to step back into the space and do the right thing here because it was originally a Commonwealth funded program and we would very much like the Commonwealth to be working with us on this."
The government will also fund a program focused on addressing the causes of mental health distress. This will be included in the government's Step Up Step Down residential service which provides a middle level of mental health care for people who need more support than is available in the community but not acute hospital treatment.
Ms Davidson said similar programs had been rolled out in the United Kingdom and were being explored in other Australian jurisdictions. Nearly $2 million will be spent on the ACT program.
"Sometimes people will end up in a mental health crisis and actually the underlying cause of it is housing stress, or its financial problems, or relationship issues or some feelings of isolation," she said.
"If we just treat that presentation, mental health distress as a clinical mental health issue, and don't address the underlying cause of it, that person is just going to keep cycling through crisis mental health crisis.
"If we can put in place some distress brief intervention services for them and refocus some of our existing programs ... to be able to look at some of those underlying causes will actually help them in the long run to prevent them."
The budget will also fund the co-design of a new Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander youth mental health service and the staged implementation of 10 accommodation support packages.
The ACT budget will be handed down on June 25.
- Support is available for those who may be distressed. Phone Lifeline 13 11 14; Mensline 1300 789 978; Kids Helpline 1800 551 800; beyondblue 1300 224 636; 1800-RESPECT 1800 737 732.
