Tuesday, 28 October 2025

 Wendy LOVELL (Northern Victoria) (23:06): (2045) My adjournment matter is for the Minister for Mental Health. The action that I seek is for the minister to urgently fund and establish at least eight dedicated acute adolescent inpatient mental health beds in the Hume region. Albury–‍Wodonga’s health redevelopment includes a new 32-bed mental health unit, but those beds will only serve adults. The same can be said for the redevelopment of the mental health unit in Shepparton, as it will not include any acute inpatient beds for adolescent patients, meaning there are zero beds for adolescents in north-east Victoria who need inpatient mental health care.

I recently met with some wonderful young people who are struggling with mental health issues and calling for real support from the government. Katie Kendall of Wodonga – a teenager – told me how hard it was to find the care she needed at the age of 16. The closest mental health bed was in Box Hill, more than 3½ hours away, and demand meant she was never guaranteed a place. Katie’s story is not uncommon. Right now 15- to 24-year-olds in crisis are still being sent hundreds of kilometres away to Box Hill for care, strapped into ambulances or divvy vans, frightened and alone. They are cut off from family, friends and even familiar support. The trauma is obvious, the cost is crushing and the ethics of leaving a young person in an emergency ward for hours before the journey even starts is indefensible. That is why Katie is leading a campaign called Beyond Beds. The campaign is a group of young people, mainly in Albury–Wodonga and Shepparton communities, who want better access to inpatient facilities for adolescents requiring mental health treatment. They do not have an organisation, they do not have a head office, but they have a passion driven by personal experience of pain and suffering from the system as it stands. The member for Benambra raised this issue in 2023, highlighting the story of a young man with homicidal ideations. That boy bounced in and out of Box Hill and spent hours waiting for treatment in the Albury hospital ED on numerous occasions. The toll on him and his family broke them.

There are 58 acute adolescent mental health inpatient beds across Victoria but only four in regional Victoria. These four beds are split between two in Mildura and two in Traralgon, both a long way from Wodonga and Shepparton. Young people in the north and north-east deserve better. The 2019 Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health System recommended 170 new youth and mental health beds in Victoria. In 2022 the Victorian government claimed it had responded and delivered on that recommendation by including 10 youth Hospital in the Home beds.