By KATH GANNAWAY
WITH the focus on Mental Health Week last week, cuts to mental health support programs in Healesville and Yarra Junction have come under scrutiny.
A group of consumers at Rivendell said changes to the funding of programs at Rivendell in Healesville and CAMHA in Yarra Junction in July had resulted staff redundancies and long-established programs being shelved.
Eastern Access Community Health (EACH) until recently had 100 per cent of the service provision, and funding, in Yarra Ranges, including at Rivendell and CAMHA.
Michael Jansen, general manager Community Mental Health with EACH confirmed that the organisation lost 50 per cent of its funding across the Eastern Metropolitan Region under a reformed funding model effective as of August with another provider, NEAMI National, picking up contracts in Yarra Ranges, resulting in two providers vieing for the ‘custom’.
The justification, according to one former EACH worker, is that the new funding model will give people more choice – that they have their ‘bucket’ of money and do not have to be limited to what one service is able or willing to offer.
“It does need to be asked, however, exactly what choices people will have in our local areas that will extend on what they have lost,” she said.
According to consumers who contacted the Mail, the result has been fewer services on the ground, and a push to have people engaged in established programs and groups move out into mainstream clubs or organisations.
NEIMI’s Eastern Regional Manager Matthew Colledan said his organisation provides an individually trailored outreach service working both in the home and in the local community.
“Each person has control over what that support includes and for some it will mean more one-on-one work and for others it will mean group program-style activities,” he said.
“We’re being guided by people’s own choices about the best way to support their mental health recovery.”
Mr Jansen said EACH had put a very strong argument that the government should continue to fund the organisation 100 per cent but was at the mercy of the reform process.
Mr Jansen said while NEIMI was a reputable organisation and EACH was working with it to manage the changeover of consumers, some did not want to move.
“Understandably for people who have benefited with EACH, short or long time, it is a service they know.
“We have been up front about it but we’re working with the consequences and trying to support both staff and participants in managing this change,” he said.
According to consumers who spoke with the Mail (who asked that their names be withheld) the new model ignores the reality of issues such as the stigma, particularly in smaller communities, that is still associated with mental illness, the prohibitive cost of joining mainstream activities and the peer support which they say has worked so well for them, and for many others at Rivendell over the past three decades.
