Authors: Kate Thwaites, Kellie Griffin, Tamara Layley, Amanda McCartney, Jodie Ten-Hoeve & Jacqueline Rozario
Year: 2023
Event: 2023 The MHS conference - Adelaide
Subject: Safercare Victoria’s Mental Health Improvement Program Supporting Human Rights by improving safety and quality
Type of resource: Conference Presentations and Papers
Abstract: Background: The Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health system (RCVMHS) laid out a vision of what a reimagined mental health system could look like, and how it would support the mental health and wellbeing of Victorians for years to come. RCVMHS identified reducing restrictive interventions as one of the key priorities of the work for the Mental Health Improvement Program in Safercare Victoria (SCV), along with reducing compulsory treatment, preventing gender-based violence and preventing suicides in healthcare settings. SCV is looking to build on expertise from across the state, partnering with people who have lived and living expertise, building on existing improvement efforts to accelerate implementation of best practice within the Victorian mental health system. Eliminating Restrictive Interventions The trauma of using seclusion and restraint has lasting effects on consumers, families and supporters. Staff involved also experience distress. People with lived and living experience feel that the intervention of seclusion and restraint breaches their human rights and working toward elimination of restrictive interventions will make those human rights real. The Safety for all: Towards Elimination of restrictive practices held working groups comprising of consumers carers and clinicians to identify drivers for change towards eliminating restrictive interventions. The change ideas identified can be grouped into three categories: 1. Workforce; 2. Environment; 3. See me know me. We will present and explain the methodology of Improvement Science developed by the Institute of Healthcare Improvement in how the drivers for change will be tested through a plan, do, study, act cycle together with local data to create change. We will engage the audience in a discussion regarding the change ideas we are working on. Sexual safety Improving Sexual Safety in mental health inpatient units initiative is part of a state-wide approach. We will bring health services together and support Victorian mental health inpatient units to further innovate and deliver changes that lead to improvement in sexual safety. Central to this work is the importance of partnering with consumers, carers, supporters, family members, and clinical and non-clinical workforces to inform and test change ideas and create inpatient environments that are safe for all. This important work is one of four recommendations tasked to SCV by the RCVMHS Zero Suicide Framework RCVMHS tasked SCV to support health care services to adopt the Zero Suicide Framework. “Suicide is the leading cause of death among Australians aged 15–24” Safercare Victoria has undertaken to partner with youth mental health services to adopt the Zero Suicide Framework: The Gold Coast Mental Health Specialist Service (GCMHSS) successfully implemented the framework, inspiring state health departments in South Australia, New South Wales, Queensland and New Zealand to also adopt the framework. This improvement will commence its first phase partnering with child and youth mental health services before scaling to other cohorts across the Victorian health system. This initiative forms part of a larger reform agenda and strategy to reduce suicide across the state. Bringing humanity into the youth suicide space requires difficult conversations we will engage with the audience in seeking out their view on how to approach those conversations. Reducing Compulsory Treatment Recommendation 55 of the RCVMHS tasked SCV to work with mental health and wellbeing services to: increase consumer leadership and participation in all activities to reduce compulsory treatment; support the design and implementation of local programs, informed by data, to reduce compulsory treatment; and make available workforce training on non-coercive options for treatment that is underpinned by human rights and supported decision-making principles SCV will undertake building the capacity of co design in 6 community mental health and wellbeing services. The codesign process will be supported by journey mapping the experiences of consumers, carers and clinicians from when a Community Treatment Order(CTO) is put in place, the experience of care whilst on a CTO and the support for people after CTO is revoked. The audience will learn that the human experience of people around CTO’s will inform change to a more human rights approach. The audience will be engaged on what they think local programs could include to support the reduction of community treatment orders Mental health Learning Health Network (LHN) Safercare Victoria will establish the Mental Health LHN: The Mental Health LHN brings together a diverse group of mental healthcare workforce (clinical and non-clinical), individuals with lived and living experience (consumers and carers/family), leaders, academics, researchers, and data experts to collaboratively create sustainable improvements to the Victorian mental health system in response to the RCVMHS recommendations to improve mental health quality of care. Improvements will be bolstered by the LHN’s focus on leadership, workforce development, partnering with lived experience and capability building. LHN will importantly have several mechanisms for teaching and learning that interface with the mental health sector to ensure a continuous cycle of learning, sharing, spread and scale of system improvements Learning Objective To outline work the Mental Health Improvement Program, Safercare Victoria has responded to the Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health Services The audience will learn about the application of improvement science, co design, use of collaboratives and networks realising the vision of the Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health Services References https://www.aihw.gov.au/suicide-self-harm-monitoring/data/populations-age-groups/suicide-among-young-people https://www.health.vic.gov.au/mental-health-reform/recommendation-55
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