DAVID REILLY, HOST: There's a beautiful old building, as I was saying, on the main road in Glenorchy. It's been given a very different second life. It's not a dry cleaning building anymore. Esmond Dorney, that's right. was the architect behind that building on the main street there. It's becoming a front door for mental health now. No referral needed, no appointment. Emma McBride is the minister responsible. Emma, good morning.
ASSISTANT MINISTER EMMA MCBRIDE: Good to be with you, David.
REILLY: So, in Glenorchy, look, it was supposed to open last month, as I understand it, but an announcement about it today.
MCBRIDE: Yes, opening very soon. We expect it'll open on 24 August, and I had the chance to have a walkthrough and meet with the staff with Minister Rebecca White last week. it is a beautiful, welcoming location that is distinctive and known to so many locals from Hobart and the surrounds, I know it will be a new front door for mental health care in your community.
REILLY: And so when will people actually be able to walk through the door?
MCBRIDE: I had a sneak peek last week and met with the team, but the doors will be opening, I'm told, on 24 August. Already the team is recruited and prepared to be able to meet people where they're at so that, as you've mentioned, someone doesn't need a diagnosis from a GP, they don't need a referral, and they can walk straight into a place that will be welcoming, where they'll be met with compassion and where they'll get the wraparound care they need. all linked in warmly to a service that better meets their needs.
REILLY: Okay, wraparound care. So what actually happens? You know, you don't have a diagnosis or a referral, or you might not even know whether you even really need help or what kind of help. What happens after you walk through the door?
MCBRIDE: When you walk through the door, you'll be greeted probably by someone with their own lived experience, often called peer workers, so people who have had their own experience navigating the mental health system and have had their own recovery. They will help you to be able to work through, whether it's information and advice for you or for a family member, or whether you need to come and have appointments with a counsellor or a social worker to work through whatever mental health issues that you're struggling with. We know that in Australia today, about one in five adults in any 12 months will experience mental health concerns. And in our lifetime, that's about one in two of us. So we needed to make a new front door where someone could walk in and get the support they needed sooner, tailored to their individual needs and within their own community, much closer to home.
REILLY: Now, mental health services are often announced, new mental health services, with sort of great ambition and fanfare, but then they struggle to often recruit enough people to fully staff it. Is the centre fully staffed? It's ready to deliver with enough people?
MCBRIDE: Having met them last week, they're still recruiting one more position of the seven staff, but they have clinical staff, counsellors and social workers, and as I mentioned, peer workers, people with their own personal experience, bringing together a multidisciplinary team that can offer care tailored to an individual to meet their needs. And since we've opened services in both Launceston and Devonport and a temporary location in Burnie, more than 22,000 occasions of walk-in service have been provided. These services are places that people feel confident walking into where they'll be met with the right kind of support and care and which we're sustaining by ongoing funding.
REILLY: On 936 ABC Hobart, about four minutes away from your ABC News bulletin and AM, Emma McBride is my guest, the Assistant Minister for Mental Health and Suicide Prevention, and we're talking about the opening of a new Medicare centre for mental health on the main street of Glenorchy at the old Snows Dry Cleaning building, that beautiful mid-century building that would be familiar to so many people.
Look, how will we know, Assistant Minister, whether this is actually working, this service? Will it be numbers through the door? Will it be wait times? Whether people are genuinely getting better? What's our measure of success here?
MCBRIDE: For me, as a former mental health worker myself, I worked in acute inpatient services in a regional hospital, and I saw people in distress escalate to crisis simply because there wasn't support close to home and when they needed it. So for me, measure of success will be that people walk into this service, that they're met with compassion, that they get the wraparound care that they need, and all importantly, free and backed by Medicare, because that has been one of the biggest barriers to accessing care. So that for me- and we've seen, as I mentioned, more than 22,000 people, or 22,000 episodes of care through the existing services in Tasmania. And having heard from our Chief Psychiatrist, Dr Sophie Davison, of the clinical reviews of her visiting these services, she has said that these are services where people will be met with compassion, where they'll get the wraparound care they need. And it is a new front door for mental health in Australia, and one that I'm so pleased will be opening in Glenorchy in the coming weeks.
REILLY: All right. That's what we've been promised, a kind smile and wraparound care in Glenorchy in coming weeks. So, Emma McBride, thanks for your time this morning.
MCBRIDE: Good to be with you, David.
REILLY: Assistant Minister for Mental Health and Suicide Prevention there.