From the CEO
I want to thank the many people who made Schizophrenia Awareness Week 2017 such a success! Our Parliamentary Luncheon was a sell out and many rated it the best we have ever had. David Astle and Mick Reid were both exceptional. We had close to 10% of the sitting politicians in attendance so the message went to all political parties. The Symposium also had the largest attendance in recent years and the presentations were excellent as were the evaluations. There were many regional events, so thank you to everyone who had a part in this.
Ellen Marks and I have been very busy the last week with meetings with Dr Andrew Leigh (Federal Labor), Senator Siewert (Federal Greens), Anoulak Chanthivong (NSW Labor), Tina McGuffie (Senior Policy Advsior to Federal Health Minister, Greg Hunt) and bureaucrats from the Federal Department of Health. Our areas of advocacy were the NDIS and the problems that are emerging in the field, funding for PiR, PHaMS, D2DL and Respite services. Each of these meetings were extended beyond the scheduled time with a number of the people involved requesting further meetings and information.
We all know that we are in a chaotic time, but the meetings mentioned above give me great hope that we are being listened to, and our advice is being acted on. One clear example of this has been the renegotiation of the variation on the South West Sydney Partners in Recovery program. We sought a number of variations and all were granted following consultation between ourselves and bureaucrats from federal Health.
We continue to plan for the NDIS, and have held training and planning meetings over the past two weeks. Our engagement with the NDIS is improving daily as is the number of people with a package who are choosing One Door as their provider. It is a long road ahead, but we are firmly on it and heading in the right direction.
On other matters, we have contributed to the review of the NSW Guardianship legislation, ensuring continued access for people with a psychiatric disability and the carers, and to the Law Reform Commission’s review of legislation and practice in the criminal justice system.
It has been busy!
Rob Ramjan
To read more from the June 2017 eNews, click here.