Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise tonight to speak about a recently released report, The economic value of informal mental health caring in Australia. The report was published last Thursday—it was launched here in Parliament House—by Mind Australia and the University of Queensland.

In June 2015, an estimated 240,000 Australians were providing informal mental health care to an adult with mental illness. Fifty-four thousand of these were considered primary carers. The majority of these informal carers were female and of working age; 38.4 per cent of these carers were not in the workforce; 14.7 per cent of care providers were under the age of 25; and 49.1 per cent of those considered to be primary carers had been providing care for at least 10 years.

This is the first report of its kind to quantify the replacement cost of informal mental health caring in Australia. The report found that the number of hours of informal mental health care provided in 2015 was 208 million and that that would cost governments an estimated $13.2 billion—that is after offsetting any Centrelink payments—to provide formally in the mental health services sector. This amount is larger than the national expenditure on mental health of $8.5 billion for the 2014-15 financial year.

This demonstrates the crucial role that informal mental health carers such as family members and friends play in the care of people with mental illness in Australia and how important it is that these carers are supported so that they are able to continue their vital caring roles and maintain their own mental and physical health. Without this mostly unseen mental health workforce, the quality of life of those currently receiving this care would be significantly reduced.

The amount of money that the federal and state and territory governments spend on mental health carers is low compared with the value of care they provide. The report estimated the government expenditure on services for mental health carers to be approximately $1.2 billion for 2015, and $1.1 billion of this came from the federal government in the form of income support payments. In other words, when you take that out, a small amount is spent. Some mental health carers receive support; however, others do not. The report found that 35 per cent of primary mental health carers were unaware of the services that were available to them, and around 50 per cent of mental health carers reported that their support needs were not being met.

The report noted a number of key issues around support services, including the limited availability of information regarding such services and the requirement for additional assistance, including respite care—which is a very big issue—and psychological support, and for these services to meet their intermittent caring needs. More should be done to provide this cohort of carers with better services to meet their needs, including the provision of flexible services that align with their caring responsibilities and support them in their caring roles. There is also a need to ensure that information regarding available support services is disseminated more widely so that more people are aware of what is available.

Going forward, it is also important to ensure that mental health carers are not further disadvantaged by the national rollout of the NDIS. While those they care for may receive services under the NDIS—and that is by no means guaranteed, given that the NDIS will only provide services and supports, and packages will only be available, to a relatively small percentage of the people with mental illness in Australia—we need to make sure that the needs of carers themselves are not overlooked, especially when various funding streams are being transferred to the NDIS.

We need to remember that we have to look after and support all those informal mental health carers who are providing so much valuable support in our community—support which, if you combine it with that provided by other carers in Australia, adds up to about $60 billion. That is a tremendous contribution. We need to be recognising that and supporting the contribution of all carers, in particular the informal mental health carers, in Australia.