Ms ROSOL question to MINISTER for HEALTH, MENTAL HEALTH, and WELLBEING, Mrs ARCHER
The mother-baby unit at Royal Hobart Hospital is set to be replaced by an intensive residential parenting unit at St John’s Park. This is clearly a reduction in service that will create gaps for mothers with acute mental illness. It follows significant service reduction when the St Helens clinic closed. No one has an issue with the St Johns Park model. It is needed. No one has an issue with clinical assessments in decision-making. The issue is with the gap that will be created by the St Johns Park model reducing access to specialist postnatal mental health treatment and meaning mothers will be separated from their babies. The need for both services is clear. Why won’t you just fund and provide both services, the St Johns Park model and what mothers need in terms of specialist acute mental health treatment with their babies?
ANSWER
Honourable Speaker, I thank the member for her question. We are. That is what I’ve been saying this morning. We’ve always said that the Royal Hobart Hospital was an interim model, which we stood up in a matter of weeks to address the St Helens mother-baby unit closure. We listened to clinicians, to stakeholders and members of this place when they said that a community-based model is best practice. That is what we are we are doing. It will provide multidisciplinary care, including support from the Perinatal Infant Mental Health Service (PIMHS), as is currently provided.
Importantly, since the closure of St Helens, there is now a parenting unit also open in the north with outreach to the north-west, which will complement this new unit in the south. I don’t think I can be any clearer than I have been this morning when I say we are not reducing services in any way, shape or form. We are, in fact, increasing services in every single region for new parents.
Supplementary Question
Ms ROSOL – A parenting unit does not provide acute mental health services. What we are hearing is that mothers who require acute mental health services are going to be admitted to acute mental health units in the hospital where they will be separated from their babies. It’s clearly not okay for mothers to be separated from their babies. Why do you think that is acceptable? Why won’t you keep both units so mothers can stay with their babies when they have acute mental health illness?
Mrs ARCHER – I’m not sure what part of this is not getting through. That is exactly what happens now. The model of care specifically says that the Intensive Residential Parenting Unit will provide residential admission for families with current moderate to severe mental illness without acute risk and/or parent-infant relationship challenges during the perinatal period. I reiterate what I have said previously: acute risk will always be in an inpatient mental health unit, as is the case now. Decisions in relation to whether mothers and their babies stay together are clinical decisions now. Those decisions are made now. They are always made with the safety of the mother and the baby at the forefront. That will continue. But we will also have this Intensive Residential Parenting Unit at St Johns Park, the support provided by Tresillian in the north and outreach in the north-west.
