The report, “Towards Recovery,” was compiled after two years of public consultation, analysis and review. It covers everything from mental health in the prison system to the replacement of the Waterford Hospital, but Health Minister John Haggie managed to sum it up into three items.
“I think the themes that are there are that we need to move mental health away from the shadows, we need to move mental-health care out of institutions and into the community, and we need to put some money into the system to do it,” Haggie said following the release of the report.
He reaffirmed the commitment to increase the amount of health-care money spent on mental-health services to nine per cent by 2022.
“We currently spend 5.7 per cent of our health-care budget on mental health. The Canadian average is seven per cent, and some European jurisdictions are up at 10 and 12 per cent,” he said, adding the target is above the national average because, “we’re looking at the future, not the present.”
He said making that work is going to mean looking at federal funds and slicing up the health-care pie a little differently.
“We have to look at those programs that have been put in place in the past and never really evaluated, or the evaluations were not heeded, and we may have to reconfigure that money and move it to mental health. It’s by doing that that we send clear signals that outcomes matter, whether it’s physical or mental health, and we also fulfil our obligation under the recommendations to increase mental-health funding,” he said.
Major initiatives
One of the bigger moves Haggie’s government will oversee is the handover of mental-health services in the prison system from the Department of Justice and Public Safety to the Department of Health and Community Services.
“We, on the advice of the all-party committee, particularly with the accent on mental health, have agreed with the recommendation that that responsibility should now fall into health. Obviously, what corrections was spending on health care would come to us, and we as a department would organize the health-care delivery in the pen and other health-care facilities,” he said.
Another of the major initiatives will be replacing the Waterford Hospital, but that doesn’t mean just moving what’s there to a new building, said Gerry Rogers, MHA for St. John’s Centre.
“We recommend around the Waterford that it’s not simply replacing one huge acute psychiatric hospital with another, it’s about looking at where the service is best delivered in the community,” she said. “It’s about moving more resources into the community to meet people where they’re at.”
Rogers also commented on lengthy wait lists for services. She said some people in this province wait as long as two years for the health care they need.
“Mental illness and addictions do not do well on wait lists,” she said. “I’m not sure quite how this is all going to be done, and where government will start with that, but the wait lists have got to come down. People have got to be able to access health when they need it and in what manner they need it.”
She said a stepped-care system that could help reduce wait times is being recommended, and more psychologists and counsellors will be needed.
Other recommendations involve supporting programs with a housing-first approach, using e-mental health services and increasing mental-health supports in schools. (For the full report, visit http://www.health.gov.nl.ca/health/all_party_committe_report.pdf.)
‘The work isn’t finished’
Rogers, who has been a driving force behind the all-party committee’s work, said people with lived experiences have been a major part of the process and were courageous in telling their own stories.
While happy to see the report released after more than two years of effort, she is under no illusion that the work is done.
“The recommendations, many of them are solid, they’re actionable and that’s the important thing. It was so important for the report not to be ‘wouldn’t it be nice if we could ….’ There’s an imperative, an urgency and some push behind this, and that’s what’s important. And again, the work isn’t finished. This has been the culmination of the community involvement pushing and pushing this to happen, and so we need people across the province to really ensure that these recommendations get lifted off the page and become a reality,” she said.
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