Tuesday, 18 March 2025

 Rachel PAYNE (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (12:21): (848) My question is for the Minister for Mental Health. We recently celebrated International Women’s Day, a time to reflect on how we can accelerate action to gender equality. Women living in Casey experience psychological distress at a higher rate than the state average. There was a mental health and wellbeing hub at Narre Warren to support people in Casey and Cardinia, and unfortunately that closed last year in anticipation of a mental health local opening in the area. Ten new mental health locals were due to be contracted nearly a year ago, including one in Narre Warren, and it is my understanding they are still in the planning phase, which has meant that there is now no mental health and wellbeing hub or local to service Casey and Cardinia. My question is: will the minister ensure the delivery of a mental health local at Narre Warren?

 Ingrid STITT (Western Metropolitan – Minister for Mental Health, Minister for Ageing, Minister for Multicultural Affairs) (12:22): I thank Ms Payne for her question and her ongoing interest in these important issues, particularly when it comes to mental health supports for the whole community – but we do know that women face particular needs. We have already delivered 15 locals across the state in metropolitan, regional and rural locations, and the services have been able to support over 17 000 Victorians to date. The missing middle is what these services are designed to address, supporting people who might have a mental health condition that is too serious for a GP but not serious enough for an acute mental health service, so these are important reforms that the government is delivering. Interestingly, that 17,000 has been skewing more towards women than men in the community so far.

In terms of your specific question around supports in your part of metropolitan Melbourne, the department obviously has been working closely with services in those areas. We have got a Dandenong local, which commenced services in December 2023. There was a transition arrangement in place for consumers who were accessing the Narre Warren hub to be offered the opportunity to transition over to the Dandenong local. For those that chose not to do that, there are still Commonwealth-funded Medicare Mental Health services, which used to be called Head to Health. The Commonwealth has recently rebranded them as Medicare Mental Health services, and there is one in Officer and one in Berwick.

Obviously my department is undertaking a pretty comprehensive evaluation of the first 15 locals, to take learnings from them, and we have also been working on workforce capacity and increasing the workforce pipeline. There was a $15.8 million commitment in this year’s budget to fund the graduate program to enable us to build that pipeline and obviously continue with the rollout of locals across the state. This is an important reform, and we are getting on with that work.

 Rachel PAYNE (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (12:25): I appreciate the minister’s response. By way of supplementary, in the short term community members are calling on the government to reinstate funding for mental health and wellbeing hubs like the recently closed service in Narre Warren. This interim measure would address the service gap and ensure that people are not worse off than before. Will the minister consider reinstating the funding for such hubs?

 Ingrid STITT (Western Metropolitan – Minister for Mental Health, Minister for Ageing, Minister for Multicultural Affairs) (12:25): I thank Ms Payne for her supplementary. The way that the bilateral agreement operates between the state and the Commonwealth in relation to these services is that the hubs are funded through the Commonwealth bilateral agreement, and as locals are rolled out those hubs are pulled back. It is important that we keep the network, in terms of both locals and hubs, as we continue to build the rollout of future locals, but I am very happy to keep you updated in relation to those issues in the South-Eastern Metro area.