“The system is broken. They’re the forgotten and ignored. They’re not monsters,they just need help,not a police bullet.”
“They’re the forgotten and ignored. They’re not monsters,they just need help,not a police bullet.”
Neil Wilkins,stepfather of police shooting victim Todd McKenzie
Mental Health Minister Rose Jackson conceded the mental health system was broken but would not call for a royal commission. She said she was satisfied that a current NSW Police review would render answers,alongside an inquiry into outpatient mental health services that began last week. The inquiry does not have the scope to review the mental health system as a whole and is not led by experts,nor are recommendations enforceable.
Jackson said PACER (Police,Ambulance and Clinician Early Response) “probably” needed to be expanded but was funded until 2025 and,as such,was not given funding in last week’s budget.
“I’ve only been the minister for five months,it’s a little bit difficult to hold me accountable for everything that’s happened in the 12 years previously,” Jackson said. “I’m actually out here saying we want to do better. There is a real acknowledgment that the system isn’t working well.”
Transcripts of McKenzie’s inquest held earlier this year – reviewed by theHerald last week – reveal a probe of police mental health training and use of the PACER program.
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While PACER clinicians are stationed in 19 police area commands across the state,they are not engaged when a police response is escalated to a “police operation”,where the person in crisis may have a weapon,the transcripts reveal.
NSW Police Acting Commissioner Dave Hudson last week admitted that police needed help from clinicians when responding to mental health callouts,of which there were 64,000 last year,but he failed to acknowledge the expertise sitting in his own police stations.
The transcripts reveal that,aside from the 18 hours of mandatory mental health training police cadets undergo at the academy,there is no further mandatory training after graduation. A one-day online workshop was compulsory for all officers in 2013,but it is no longer mandated.
A four-day intensive course was discontinued in September 2019 because it was oversubscribed,the coroner was told. It was replaced with a pilot two-day course,for which uptake was stymied in part by COVID-19 before it too was axed.
Rob Ramjan,trustee of Psychosis Australia and a 17-year member of the Mental Health Review Tribunal as well as an architect of the intensive police course,said the mental health system was “very broken ... understaffed and underfunded”.
“I think mental health services in NSW are pretty appalling at the moment,” Ramjan said.
“The prisons are taking on the role of the psychiatric hospital more often,and part of that is people’s unwillingness – whether they be the cops,the mental health service – to actually deal with people with a mental illness.”
Ramjan said previous royal commissions and inquiries had “if anything seen a system that just gets worse and worse”,and suggested “starting from scratch”.
“The World Health Organisation has been pretty clear about that – the burden of disease from mental illnesses. It’s 14 per cent,so 14 per cent of the health budget should go to mental health,” he said.
National Justice Project chief executive George Newhouse echoed calls for a royal commission “because too many people are dying and being harmed by police and their use of violence”.
In a statement in response to detailed questions,Police Minister Yasmin Catley said only that a three-month NSW Police review would look at mental health training and responses. A report is due in November.
A spokesperson for NSW Police said PACER was “led,funded and managed by NSW Health” and would not comment further. The spokesperson did not expand on questions about mental health training other than to say there was “annual” training for officers.