The Hon Mark Butler MP, Minister for Mental Health and Ageing, Minister for Social Inclusion, Minister Assisting the Prime Minister on Mental Health Reform, Minister for Housing and Homelessness
Images of The Hon Mark Butler MP, Minister for Mental Health and Ageing, Minister for Social Inclusion, Minister Assisting the Prime Minister on Mental Health Reform, Minister for Housing and Homelessness

THE HON MARK BUTLER MP

Minister for Mental Health and Ageing

Minister for Social Inclusion

Minister Assisting the Prime Minister on Mental Health Reform

Minister for Housing and Homelessness

Australian Government Support for Carers and Their Families

Print page  Decrease text size  Increase text size


Minister for Mental Health and Ageing Mark Butler has launched Wellbeing Fiesta carers’ health and wellbeing festival at West Beach in Adelaide.

PDF printable version of Australian Government Support for Carers and Their Families (PDF 18 KB)

17 October 2010

Minister for Mental Health and Ageing Mark Butler today launched Wellbeing Fiesta carers’ health and wellbeing festival at West Beach in Adelaide.

The festival, run by Carer Support, a South Australian carer association, is one of many events being held around Australia this week to recognise the valuable role that carers play in looking after a family member or friend who is unable to look after themselves.

Mr Butler said the Gillard Government was committed to supporting carers through many programs and initiatives, some of which include:

    • financial support through a carer payment for people whose caring responsibilities prevent them from substantial paid employment
    • reforms in 2009 to make pensions more secure and sustainable
    • the introduction of an annual Carer Supplement of $600 for eligible recipients of the Carer Payment and up to $600 for recipients of the Carer Allowance
    • the National Respite for Carers Program that provides respite care and counselling and carer information and, if required, assistance for people with their caring duties.

The National Respite for Carers Program helped more than 143,000 people last financial year.

This included support from 54 Commonwealth Respite and Centrelink Centres, more than 650 community-based respite services and a network of carer associations providing the National Carer Counselling program.

The Government will provide more than $200 million to the National Respite for Carers Program during 2010–2011 and is working to make the program more flexible and responsive to the needs of consumers.

There are also other specialised respite care programs that help young carers complete secondary education and families carers and families of people with mental illness, psychiatric disability and/or intellectual disability to access flexible respite and support options.

Mr Butler will launch National Carers Week at Old Parliament House in Canberra tomorrow.

For more information, please contact the Minister’s Office on 02 6277 7280

Help with accessing large documents

When accessing large documents (over 500 KB in size), it is recommended that the following procedure be used:

  1. Click the link with the RIGHT mouse button
  2. Choose "Save Target As.../Save Link As..." depending on your browser
  3. Select an appropriate folder on a local drive to place the downloaded file

Attempting to open large documents within the browser window (by left-clicking) may inhibit your ability to continue browsing while the document is opening and/or lead to system problems.

Help with accessing PDF documents

To view PDF (Portable Document Format) documents, you will need to have a PDF reader installed on your computer. A number of PDF readers are available through the Australian Government Information Management Office (AGIMO) Web Guide website.