Orange Mayor Reg Kidd has welcomed the decision by the NSW Minister for Mental Health, Bronnie Taylor, to attend a Mental Health Round-Table in Orange next month.
Orange City Council will host the event which will bring together agencies and stakeholders to work on solutions to the region's mental health and wellbeing needs.
Orange Mayor Reg Kidd said it will be good opportunity to raise concerns.
"I'm delighted the minister has accepted the Council's invitation to come to Orange and sit down to talk with locals," Cr Reg Kidd said. "As our regional community comes back from the pandemic, and continues the recovery from the drought, we're all facing a range of new challenges that are adding extra dimensions to problems which have been there for some time."
"The Orange region is fortunate to have a range of health professionals, agencies, NGOs and government departments which are already doing very important work in this field.
"Asking the minister to come to Orange is all about keeping the lines of communication open about this very important area of community life. While the delivery of mental health services is not a key area of service delivery for a local council, we can play an important part in advocacy work, keeping lines of communication open across the community and then helping to put the case to other tiers of government."
"Our Council Health Advisory group has been a strong advocate for the Centre for Rural and Remote Health based on the Bloomfield campus. Council and a number of council personnel have worked in various ways with the Centre and stakeholders to improve knowledge of the issues."
Minister for Mental Health, Regional Youth and Women Bronnie Taylor thanked Mr Kidd for the invitation and commended him for his leadership on the topic of mental health.
"I thank the Mayor for arranging this really important forum where crisis organisations and mental health clinicians will come together to share ideas and discuss what is and isn't working for the local community," Mrs Taylor said.
"These conversations will inform our local responses and I hope we will get some really great outcomes around suicide prevention, better service coordination and supporting people who have been through a suicidal crisis."
Orange City Council's Mental Health roundtable will be held on Friday 23 April in the Council Chambers.
The roundtable will focus on suicide prevention, together with the coordination, delivery and availability of services for the region.
Representatives to be invited will include private and public service providers, Primary Health Networks, Central NSW JO reps as well as clinicians from the NSW Government's Rural Adversity Mental Health Program (RAMHP), bushfire, drought and farmgate programs.
