Apparently I look like Abraham Lincoln. I just passed a rather vivacious young man on the street near work, and he made this observation. I'm pretty sure he meant it as a compliment.
I should explain. I was, unusually, wearing a suit, perhaps adding to an air of seriousness. I was wearing this because First Step was honoured to host Her Excellency the Honourable Professor Margaret Gardner, Governor of Victoria, at our premises last week in honour of First Step’s 25th birthday. The Governor was a highly engaged guest, asking questions, making links between her academic world and our practical work, reflecting on her numerous visits to prisons, and sharing her enthusiasm for developments in Victoria around therapeutic courts (fewer people incarcerated, more people in treatment).
And, notably, for the first time in some years when presenting First Step to a new audience, I did not mention the Royal Commission.
I am getting the feeling, from a variety of sources, that the Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health System and it's many recommendations, are no longer the guiding light for the Victorian government. It is the vibe in the mental health sector that what has been achieved has been achieved, and that the government is moving on. There is not the budget nor the political will to redouble efforts on things like the Local Mental Health and Wellbeing Locals, and I am advised (not by anyone in the government, I should add) that championing this would be futile.
Our jobs at First Step are hard, really hard. Not least of all those staff with client-facing roles: doctors, peers, mental health clinicians, lawyers, receptionists, and others. We desperately need core principles and recommendations from the Royal Commission to live on. But our clients need this much more!
If the government is cooling on the implementation of all Royal Commission recommendations, where do we focus our advocacy efforts, whilst continuing to find new and better ways to apply the Royal Commission’s principles, day by day, bit by bit? It is our hope that the Victorian Alcohol and Other Drug Strategy 2025–2035 brings the AOD sector into focus (and funds it appropriately). The ‘new’ Collaborative Centre for Mental Health and Wellbeing carries a great weight of expectation now, as one of the real outputs from the Royal Commission. And we perhaps transfer some of our hope to the newly forming Local Health Service Networks.
And that's because we still need to make integrated, community care the norm (all the help you want and need from one team in one place), put lived and living experience at the heart, keep addressing access for under-supported communities, end seclusion and restraint in the hospital system, and much more besides.
I sincerely hope that the young man who so politely remarked on my appearance, in amongst a few other simultaneous conversations with people present and not present, will get all the help he wants and needs in the community, including support from peers who have been where he is. I hope that he will never be secluded or restrained in hospital. I hope that he will be supported to voice and use his lived experience. And I also wish all of this for his mum, who was on the end of the phone, doubtless worrying about him for at least the one-millionth time.
| Patrick Lawrence Chief Executive Officer |
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