The Tasmanian Government's highly successful Mental Health Emergency Response service is a step closer to expanding to Northern Tasmania with the recruitment for key roles underway.
The Mental Health Emergency Response (MHER) is a tri-agency co-response service that provides care and support to people in mental health crisis in community settings.
It is based on the Southern PACER (Police, Ambulance, Clinician, Early Response) model, where first responders from each of the three organisations collectively attend callouts in the same vehicle.
Recruitment has commenced for 2.27FTE Mental Health Clinical Nurse Consultant positions.
Successful applicants will partner with fellow first responders from Ambulance Tasmania and Tasmania Police to deliver the service.
Minister for Mental Health and Wellbeing, Roger Jaensch, said this was a positive step forward as part of our 2030 Strong Plan for Tasmania's Future with the program anticipated to begin in the first half of 2025.
"We are expanding the Mental Health Emergency Response service to Northern Tasmania because we have seen the benefit it has to communities and frontline services in other parts of the State," Minister Jaensch said.
"Since rolling out in Southern Tasmania in 2022 and the North West in November 2023, the service has attended more than 6,000 callouts to people in the community experiencing mental health distress.
"In approximately 75 per cent of cases, patients have received compassionate care that has enabling them to remain in the community and avoid unnecessary hospital attendances or admissions.
"Not only do people have better outcomes by avoiding hospital, but these community-based interventions reduce pressure on our hospitals, ambulance and police services.
"I look forward to welcoming our new Mental Health Clinical Nurse Consultants and seeing the service launch in Northern Tasmania in coming months."
Over the past decade, our Government has invested record funding of over $614 million to transform Tasmania's mental health system. Through our overarching Rethink 2020 mental health plan, we are taking a best-practice approach to delivering a contemporary and accessible statewide model of mental health, so people can get more holistic support – including more community-based options and a focus on early intervention and prevention.
