I developed schizophrenia
and lost everything basically -
connection with family,
credibility that I'd had from quite a young age,
nice income,
security.
It takes over your life, it becomes your life.
Your diagnosis or your problems become your life.
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.
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.
Partners in Recovery is designed to meet the needs
of people with severe and persistent and complex mental illness.
People with that condition
require a range of supports across government and non-government agencies.
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.
All of these things are things that are important
to keep people well and participating.
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.
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.
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.
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.
..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.
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?
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.
Following an application process:
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.
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?'
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.
..which can be used to purchase services and appropriate supports
when client needs are identified:
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.
The Partners in Recovery organisations
will coordinate between sectors, services and supports
at a regional level
to promote seamless service delivery.
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?
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:
..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:
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.
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.
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.
And because it's more coordinated,
it's something that's likely to be much more effective in a person's life.
Partners in Recovery will be able to achieve outcomes
that we haven't been able to achieve before
through the strength of collaboration.
Housing and employment services,
income support services -
to get them all involved, all working off the same page...
Where everybody is all pulling together
to focus on what is in the primary interests of the individual...
If we don't get that right,
we're not really going to help the patient in the end.
With the right sorts of services,
people can find themselves stabilising their lives relatively quickly.
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.
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.
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.
Organisations eligible to apply
to become a PIR organisation include:
In addition, joined up or multi-regional approaches
will also be considered.
Applications by consortiums will be viewed favourably.
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.
The closing date for applications will likely be in later October.
The applications will be assessed
and organisations will start to be engaged from the end of the year.