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Partners in Recovery: video of stakeholder interviews

Interviews with departmental staff and members of the PIR Expert Reference Group providing information about PIR.

Video of stakeholder interviews
Transcript of stakeholder interviews

Transcript

Slide: Australian Government Department of Health and Ageing
Partners in Recovery coordinated support and flexible funding for people with severe and persistent mental illness with complex needs

Janet Meagher, Divisional Manager, Inclusion, Psychiatric Rehabilitation Australia (PRA), Mental Health Consumer: I developed schizophrenia and lost everything basically - connection with family, credibility that I'd had from quite a young age, nice income, security.

Slide: Mental illness accounts for 13% of the total burden of disease in Australia.

Janet Meagher: It takes over your life, it becomes your life. Your diagnosis or your problems become your life.

Slide: Around 600,000 Australians experience severe mental illness and some 60,000 have enduring and disabling symptoms with complex, multi-agency support needs.

Janet Meagher: They may be the people that services have rejected over and over. They may be the people who've fallen out of our own service provision somewhere along the line.

Judy Bentley, Mental Health Carer: We have to support our son. Certainly he can't manage financially. He would benefit so much if there was somebody who could assist him with his life.

Slide: The Partners in Recovery initiative will focus on 24,000 of these 60,000 people nationally.

What is Partners in Recovery?

Fiona Nicholls, Assistant Secretary, Mental Health Services Branch (DoHA): Partners in Recovery is designed to meet the needs of people with severe and persistent and complex mental illness.

Sue Campion, Acting First Assistant Secretary, Mental Health and Drug Treatment Division (DoHA): People with that condition require a range of supports across government and non-government agencies.

David Meldrum, Executive Officer, Mental Illness Fellowship of Australia: Around about 20% of the work is getting the mental illness under control as best you can, and that's the whole clinical spectrum.

About 80% of getting a quality of life back is a whole lot of other things - it's about your family relationships, it's about being poor, it's about being lonely, it's about your physical health, it's about possibilities for employment.Top of page

Fiona Nicholls: All of these things are things that are important to keep people well and participating.

Sally Sinclair, CEO, National Employment Services Association: The housing services, primary, secondary and tertiary health care, a whole range of areas that the person may be accessing, but invariably there hasn't been the coordination.

Judy Bentley: We often don't know where to go, who can actually guide us through the maze of services that are out there. Often we don't know what's there.

Fiona Nicholls: The Partners in Recovery initiative ensures that individuals are provided with the supports that they need to navigate a complex service system, that they are supported to access the range of services that they need.

David Meldrum: It's focusing on the main issue, and that is that we've got to build regional systems that can actually talk to each other in a way that produces tangible change.

Slide: The Partners in Recovery initiative aims to:

• Improve the system response to, and outcomes for, people with severe and persistent mental illness who have complex needs
• Facilitate better coordination of clinical and other supports and services
• To deliver 'wrap-around' care individually tailored to the person's needs
• Strengthen partnerships and build better links between various clinical and community support organisations responsible for delivering services to the Partners in Recovery target group
• Improve referral pathways that facilitate access to the range of services and supports needed by the Partners in Recovery target group and
• Promote a community-based recovery model to underpin all clinical and community support services delivered to people experiencing severe and persistent mental illness with complex needs.

David Meldrum: It takes a gigantic problem, which is Australia wide, of, why is it we can't be more effective in joining up the dots that people need joined up when they've got severe and persistent mental illness?

Frank Quinlan, CEO, Mental Health Council of Australia: So that the person who needs the service doesn't also have to be the person who understands that web of services that's available locally.Top of page

How it works

Following an application process, suitably placed and experienced non-government organisations will be engaged as Partners in Recovery organisations in each of the 61 Medicare Local geographic regions.

Fiona Nicholls: We are looking for services to think about the needs of their regions, to be aware of the existing services in their regions and how these services could work together collaboratively to better support this client group.

David Meldrum: And that creates the possibility that a handful of the right people - they'll probably be senior people from a number of key agencies - can get together around a table and start to say, 'How do we do better, first of all, for individuals, and then for all the people in our region who have these sort of needs?'

Fiona Nicholls: So, the Partners in Recovery initiative is designed to build on the existing system. And it needs to be both a flexible service model to address the issues in each individual service system but it also is bringing with it some additional funding to support possible gaps in services.

Slide: The Partners in Recovery organisations will have access to a limited amount of flexible funding which can be used to purchase services and appropriate supports when client needs are identified, but are not able to be immediately met through normal channels.

Fiona Nicholls: It could be addressing the physical health issues of a client, it could be paying for them to go to the dentist, it could be support in terms of education and training, it might be in terms of short-term housing support while they are waiting for longer-term services.

Slide: The Partners in Recovery organisations will coordinate between sectors, services and supports at a regional level to promote seamless service delivery.

Leanne Wells, Transitional CEO, Australian Medicare Local Alliance: Systems that are providing homelessness services or systems that are providing psychiatric disability services, systems that are providing general practice services - how can we better organise that system?Top of page

Slide: There are a number of sectors that are central to the success of this initiative including, for instance:

• Primary care (health and mental health)
• State or territory specialist mental health systems
• Mental health and broader NGO sector
• Alcohol and other drug services
• Income support services, as well as
• Education, employment and housing supports.

The role of PIR organisations

Fiona Nicholls: We will be looking at Partners in Recovery agencies to both work at an individual client level and at a systems level to ensure that services are delivered that best meet the needs of the client group.

So, Partners in Recovery organisations will be required to:

• develop collaborative arrangements with the range of service providers that are critical to meeting the needs of this care group
• to establish effective referral pathways so that people can move through the service system as they need to
• to undertake comprehensive assessments of the care needs of clients
• ensure that appropriate action plans to meet those care needs are developed and
• to ensure that the services across the system operate effectively to meet those needs.Top of page

The benefits

Fiona Nicholls: If Partners in Recovery is successful, we would hope to see that clients felt that they were much better able to work their way through that service system, that they were supported to access the right services that they needed and, in so doing, that they were able to remain well in the community.

David Meldrum: There are some parts of Australia where there's an ideal mental health system working, but they're very idiosyncratic, they don't tend to last, and so I see Partners in Recovery as a chance to start working consistently across Australia at better connections between the bits.

Sally Sinclair: Partners in Recovery will ensure that all of the range of services that that individual should be able to optimally access can be well coordinated and wrapped around the individual so they can get the best possible outcome.

Frank Quinlan: And because it's more coordinated, it's something that's likely to be much more effective in a person's life.

Sally Sinclair: Partners in Recovery will be able to achieve outcomes that we haven't been able to achieve before through the strength of collaboration.

Judy Bentley: Housing and employment services, income support services - to get them all involved, all working off the same page...

Sally Sinclair: Where everybody is all pulling together to focus on what is in the primary interests of the individual...

Leanne Wells: If we don't get that right, we're not really going to help the patient in the end.

Frank Quinlan: With the right sorts of services, people can find themselves stabilising their lives relatively quickly.

Janet Meagher: Partners in Recovery is not about anything but coordinating all those services and individual needs to enhance their opportunity and to encourage their recovery to go from down here to up here.Top of page

The application process

Sue Campion: Organisations can get involved in Partners in Recovery by firstly looking at the guidelines that have just been released that explain the scope of the program and how it will operate.

Fiona Nicholls: They should then start talking to other stakeholders and service providers in their region and start to think about the partnerships that they could develop with those people and then they should start thinking about what are the service models that might work best in their regions, taking into account local arrangements.

Slide: Organisations eligible to apply to become a PIR organisation include:

• Suitably placed, experienced and incorporated non-government health and welfare service providers in Medicare Local geographic regions
• In addition, joined up or multi-regional approaches will also be considered.
• Applications by consortiums will be viewed favourably.

Information sessions August – September 2012
Information sessions for potential applicants and other interested parties will be held in each state and territory during August and September.

Following the information sessions, there will be a call for applications through an invitation-to-apply process.

Applications close: late October
The closing date for applications will likely be in later October.

Assessment and decision on PIR organisations: Towards the end of the year
The applications will be assessed and organisations will start to be engaged from the end of the year.

For more information go to: Mental Health site (www.health.gov.au/mentalhealth)

Australian Government Department of Health and Ageing