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Partners in Recovery: fact sheet

Coordinated support and flexible funding for people with severe and persistent mental illness with complex needs.

Partners in Recovery: fact sheet (PDF 157 KB)

People experiencing severe and persistent mental illness who also have complex needs require a comprehensive and coordinated response from a range of sectors – including health, housing, income support, disability, education and employment. Partners in Recovery (PIR) recognises that many people with severe and persistent mental illness have more complex needs than current systems can meet. PIR is designed to provide a new level of inter-agency collaboration to find new and better coordinated pathways to recovery that meet the full range of an individual's needs.

What is PIR?
How will PIR work?
The key components of PIR

What is PIR?

PIR will better support people experiencing severe and persistent mental illness with complex needs by getting the multiple sectors, services and supports they may come into contact with (and could benefit from) to work in a more collaborative, coordinated, and integrated way.

Through building stronger partnerships between sectors, services and supports, PIR will promote collective responsibility and encourage innovative solutions to ensure individuals are able to access the services and supports needed to sustain and support their optimal health, wellbeing, and recovery.

How will PIR work?

While the PIR roll‐out model may vary across regions depending on need and context, the common feature of all models will be the engagement of suitably placed and experienced non‐government organisations to deliver PIR across Medicare Local geographic regions. PIR organisations will be the mechanism that glues together all the services and supports within the region that the individual requires. They will employ dedicated support facilitators who will undertake a comprehensive assessment of the client's support needs and develop a PIR action plan to guide the necessary engagement and integration of services. The plan will be developed in collaboration with local 'partners' (sectors, services and supports) within the region, to schedule and prioritise the delivery of services to the client for maximum benefit.

The support facilitator will continue to work closely with existing case managers and other agencies' support staff, thereby ensuring case management functions and existing relationships are maintained. Regular reviews will be held with the client to ensure the necessary adjustments are made to the PIR action plan to meet the ongoing and evolving needs of the PIR client.Top of page

The key components of PIR

PIR support facilitators will be appropriately skilled and experienced individuals who will better link and coordinate services for individuals. PIR organisations will coordinate between sectors, services and supports at a regional level to promote seamless service delivery. This will be achieved through forging stronger partnerships between service providers, to increase efficiencies and improve overall service provision. A PIR flexible funding pool will help to build system capacity and to meet immediate and short term priority client needs that are unable to be met through normal channels. This will help fill the gaps, and drive improved responses to, and outcomes for, individuals with severe and persistent mental illness and complex unmet needs.