New South Wales will send specialist nurses rather than police to some mental health emergencies after the state announced long-fought-for reform in the wake of multiple deaths at the hands of police.
Rose Jackson and Yasmin Catley, the mental health and police ministers, announced on Thursday a statewide change to how triple zero calls are triaged, with a new team of mental health experts assessing mental health calls ۲۴/۷ in a bid to provide better support.
The change, funded by $۲۷۰m over ten years, will also establish a hub providing real-time clinical advice to NSW Ambulance first responders and assisting them in making safer decisions.
This will be bolstered by eight new mental health teams that will provide a health-led response to call-outs and include a paramedic and specialist mental health nurse. But this initiative will only operate ۱۲ hours a day and won’t be statewide.
Outside those ۱۲ hours, police or existing responses such as the co-response model known as Police Ambulance and Clinical Early Response (Pacer) – which has been criticised by advocates for not operating ۲۴/۷ and statewide – will respond.
The mental health minister, Rose Jackson, said reform, which was shaped by the UK’s “right person, right care” model, was “only the beginning” and could be scaled statewide.
“We’re committing $۲۷۰m as a first step. But I recognise that mental health crises don’t happen within neat ۱۲-hour windows. They’re things that can occur any time of day, any day of the week,” she said.
Police and government had been under pressure to enact reforms after fatalities while people were in mental health distress. This included ۴۲-year-old Jesse Deacon, who lived with schizophrenia and was fatally shot by police at his home in a public housing estate after he was reported to be self-harming in July ۲۰۲۳.
Deacon’s mother, ۸۲-year-old Judy Deacon, has since become one of the state’s loudest voices for change in pushing for change, and has called for mental health experts to triage triple zero calls.
Deacon welcomed the change as an important first step that might have saved her son’s life.
“I think the outcome might have been different,” she said. “Me and other victims’ families will be closely watching and making sure it will end up making a difference.”
Police will continue to be the lead responder in instances where there’s a risk to safety, such as if someone is armed with a knife.
Grace Cameron-Lee, a senior solicitor in the police accountability practice at Redfern Legal Centre, welcomed the change but said NSW police training and operational changes that prioritise de-escalation techniques “remains critical”.
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Asked on Thursday if the reform would include more training for police, Catley said: “Police are trained in mental health. That’s a component of their training in Goulburn now, but … they are not mental health clinicians, and that has to be recognised.
“This model is exactly what we need to ensure that those people who are experiencing a mental health incident get the right care.”
Dr Pramudie Gunaratne, the chief executive of the Australian Society of Psychiatrists, also welcomed the reform, describing it as “a stronger front door into the mental health system”.
But, she said, “a front door is only useful if there’s a house behind it” and urged more funding for community mental health support.
“Without enough community mental health services, people will still find themselves stuck in the cycle of crisis, emergency response and discharge, instead of receiving the sustained care they need to recover,” she said.
Jackson has been under pressure to release analysis into the mental health system which is expected to have outlined the resource gaps in the system.
She said on Thursday she planned to release the report publicly but didn’t give a timeline.
“There are gaps in the system, particularly in community mental health care. And yes, this is about a different response for crisis and emergency … It’s obviously preferable if we can invest earlier so that we don’t get to that crisis point.”
