Last month I wrote about the Victorian Government’s Alcohol and Other Drug Strategy 2025-20235, where one of the five “focus areas” (number five) is “Integration across intersecting systems.”
Last week, our peak body VAADA released a survey of rural and regional AOD workers. Once again (this time a “recommendation” but again at number five) integrated care appears. This time framed as: strengthening workforce capability in complex practice areas. And also last week, First Step made a submission in response to the Federal Government’s Drug and Alcohol Program’s program logic.
Integrated care appears there too. Multiple times.
Different documents, different authors, same conclusion: All roads lead to integrated care.
So, what is it? You know it when you see it. It’s when people get all the help they want and need from one team in one place. Dignified. Convenient. Empowering. Welcoming. Safe. Multi-disciplinary and whole-of-life. Highly-skilled. Collaborative.
Beyond the jargon and the vision alone, it is a series of values, principles and resources that make the experience of integrated care real for people. It requires workforce capability. It requires organisational design. It requires partnerships that actually function, not just exist on paper. In terms of governments, there is more or less a clean slate where a definition of integrated care should exist. First Step will help with that.
As First Step prepares its next budget and begins work on our next strategic plan, integrated care remains central. We will continue to ensure that integrated care is consistently delivered at First Step. At the same time, we see a clear role in supporting the broader AOD, mental health and related sectors to define integrated care, to aim for it, and to move towards it in practice.
Because this is not abstract work. It is an exciting area that leads to real and significant change in people’s lives: incremental, whole-of-life improvements. And increasingly, it is where the system appears to be heading, but it still needs a lot of help.
| Patrick Lawrence Chief Executive Officer |
 |
