7. HEATHER ROY (Deputy Leader—ACT) Link to this
to the Minister of Health
Has he been advised of the Central Region’s Technical Advisory Services’ Regional Mental Health and Addiction Service Development Plan of June 2006; if so, does he agree that the changes to mental health and addiction services indicated in the report will serve the mentally unwell in the central region better in 2016 than 2006?
Hon PETE HODGSON (Minister of Health) Link to this
I have seen a draft report; I believe that it shows the commitment of the central region’s mental health workforce to improving services for local people.
Does he agree with the report’s focus that in 2016 “the approach to residential services will be substantially different. There will be few residential beds …”; and where does Labour believe those with mental illnesses are better off—sleeping in residential beds or sleeping rough on park benches?
The move to community-based provision of mental health services has been going on for some time. Clearly, it is not satisfactory for anyone with a mental health problem to be sleeping rough. I think that the member should take a look at the report—in particular, at the bottom of the first page of the executive summary—which I think puts in context where mental health services in this country are going.
Maryan StreetHas the Minister seen any reports on public support for improvements in mental health and addiction services?
I have seen a report that Heather Roy has come out against the policy of the deinstitutionalisation of people with mental illness, saying that the policy was driven by fiscal conservatives. The member need only look at today’s media coverage regarding the horrors of Lake Alice Hospital to know that deinstitutionalisation not only costs more but improves people’s lives.
Dr Jonathan Coleman Link to this
Can the Minister confirm that the development plan intends to devolve psychiatric care of the elderly from hospitals to rest homes; does he have any idea how unsafe that is; and is not this plan all about cost cutting, rather than treating older New Zealanders with the respect they deserve?
We have been moving older New Zealanders from hospitals to rest homes—or, more accurately, to dementia units and psychogeriatric units—for years. The member should know that it is not a cost-saving matter to look after people in the community. The member should also talk to the member of the ACT party, his colleague who seems to be somehow in favour of residential care for those with psychiatric illness, whereas the member seems to be against it.
Does the Minister share the plan’s vision of “an increased uptake and dissemination of web-based medicine, telepsychiatry, and telephone based support”; if so, is it now Labour’s plan to have the health needs of Kiwis met by telephone psychics, call centres in India, radiologists in Lebanon, and the Internet?
The member should catch up. The idea that mental health workers might use phones to contact their patients is hardly radical. It has been going on all over the world for a lot longer than two decades. I tell the member that one of the central region’s district health boards, the Wairarapa District Health Board, already has no hospital beds, though it does purchase about 1½ beds in MidCentral District Health Board, through the gorge. But the member needs to catch up; that is where the provision of psychiatric services has been moving for about 20 years.
I seek the leave of the House to table the Regional Mental Health and Addiction Service Development Plan for the central region’s district health boards.
I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. The Minister, in one of his answers, referred to the executive summary in the same plan that I just sought to table. The draft I have is dated June 2006 and has no executive summary, so the Minister was quoting from a separate document. I invite him to table that.
Madam SPEAKERNo, I am seeking to add to the point of order I have just raised. When a Minister refers to a document or a report, he or she is duty-bound to table that document if so requested by any member of the House.
That is so at the time and if the Minister is reading from it. Could the Minister assist the member on this.