Press conference - Hobart, Tasmania

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
PRESS CONFERENCE
HOBART, TASMANIA
THURSDAY, 13 JUNE 2024

SUBJECT: New Open Arms Mental Health Initiatives in Tasmania

MINISTER FOR VETERANS’ AFFAIRS AND DEFENCE PERSONNEL, MATT KEOGH: Well, it's wonderful to be here in Hobart again, and we're at the Open Arms office here in Hobart. And we are very present as a Government, as I have no doubt the State Government is aware as well, and it's great to be joined here by the Tasmanian Veterans’ Minister, Guy Barnett, of the issues that have been confronted by the over 17,000 veterans here in Tasmania in accessing acute specialist mental health services, and in particular inpatient mental health services. For many veterans in Tasmania, it's meant that they've had to travel to Victoria, to what's known as Ward 17 at the old Repatriation Hospital, to access those higher end mental health services when they've been needed. And recognising that, we're very happy to be announcing that we've launched a new program through Open Arms, funded by the Albanese Labor Government, to provide that additional mental health support to veterans in need here in Tasmania. This is a service that is initially being run from right here in Open Arms in Hobart, and will be rolled out across Launceston as well as Burnie, so that it's available to veterans across Tasmania. This is an eight week program where veterans come together in groups of eight or nine, it'll be a program run throughout the year, so they can access more intensive mental health support services here, which we hope not only helps them in dealing with the issues that they may have, but also will mean that less Tasmanian veterans have to go and access services outside of the state of Tasmania. And that's really important in terms of their recovery and dealing with their mental health concerns, because we know that they will get improved benefit from being able to access those services here in Tasmania, here at home, close to their existing family or other support networks.

So that's really important. But also, in addition to that eight week program, there's a further extension PTSD focused program for those that need that additional support. And again, it's about making sure the veterans are able to access that specialist mental health support right here, close to home, in Tasmania, instead of having to travel interstate. It's most unfortunate we saw the closure of a mental health inpatient facility here in Tasmania last year, but recognising that need, we're making that additional investment in the services being provided here in Tasmania through Open Arms, working together with the State Government.

And that's an important part of the initiative here today, and I'll get Guy to speak about that in just a moment. But making sure that veterans aren't falling through the cracks, where veterans are presenting to mainstream health services through the Tasmanian health services, that they are being identified as veterans and being referred back into these new services through Open Arms as required, so they can get what they need in terms of mental health support. And this program that we're rolling out in Tasmania, recognising the special need that exists here now though, won't just be a benefit to veterans in Tasmania. This is a great opportunity to see how this program can work in this environment, to see if it will have benefit also across the Australian veteran community. So this is a great initiative, not just to support veterans here in Tasmania, not just to work more closely with the Tasmanian health system and with the Tasmanian State Government, but to pilot that for what we may be able to roll out across the country.  And critical to that is this idea of identifying veterans accessing mainstream health services. It's been an issue identified by the Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide that we need to do better in working together with state health systems. And standing up here is an important way in which we can trial that program so that we can provide better support for veterans and indeed their families who are of course impacted by the mental health issues that are confronted by veterans, right here in Tasmania. I'm going to give to Guy to speak to a bit of the detail about how this will interact with the Tasmanian health service as well, and this is a great partnership. Thanks very much.

TASMANIAN MINISTER FOR VETERANS’ AFFAIRS, GUY BARNETT: Thanks very much. It's really special to be here today as Minister for Veterans’ Affairs, but also as Minister for Mental Health and Wellbeing, and thanks to Open Arms for being here today and for hosting Matt Keogh and myself and the team here. Thank you to Matt Keogh, Minister for Veterans’ Affairs and the Federal Government for this support.  We welcome it here in Tasmania. This is something that we've been advocating for as a State Government on behalf of our veterans. In Tasmania we have 7,500 veterans and of course their families. So many families and people are impacted.

And this is really special. It's an important initiative and to have Open Arms set up here obviously in Hobart, in Launceston, in Burnie. Tasmania is a decentralised state and you can see that those services across the state will be incredibly important.

As the Department of Mental Health and Wellbeing, we want a complementary approach. We have sadly seen the impact of mental health on our veterans for decades. And it's becoming more real and more obvious. We've just had of course the Royal Commission as Matt's rightly noted.

And in terms of the outcomes of that, obviously there will be more said in due course, but clearly the evidence put to the Royal Commission and the findings are very clear. And we need to do better to support our veterans and their families when it comes to mental health. This is part of the solution. And I say thank you to the Federal Government for stepping up, providing that support. And we will be working shoulder to shoulder with the Federal Government to get the job done. And I thank Open Arms for delivering this practical, hands-on support when it comes to mental health and well-being for our veterans.

It's really important and I'd like to pass to Dr Jon Lane to share a little bit about the program, how it works and then we'll have some questions. Thanks again.

OPEN ARMS MEDICAL ADVISOR, PSYCHIATRY, DR JON LANE: Thank you Minister Barnett and Minister Keogh. So first of all I'd just like to thank Minister Keogh for the courage I suppose to fund these kinds of initiatives. Because they aren't done very much anywhere in the world because they rely heavily on lived experience peers and clinicians to actually deliver community-based interventions. And typically when you think about treatment you think about hospitals. Well that doesn't necessarily work when you're in regional areas, let alone in rural areas. And even in large urban centres as well too, relying on hospitals doesn't necessarily help people get better over the longer term. It does for the very acute needs, but for the longer term functional needs you need a community-based program. These kinds of community-based programs rely on educating people about their service conditioning and what I mean by that is service culture.

So in the military, the shared language, the shared experiences, the history, traditions and everything that they've been through becomes a common denominator and something that you can use to bond people together in a group program. And so when you run these kinds of programs over eight weeks, two to three hours a session, where people learn about what's happened to them, how they respond and why they respond or react like that, and then how they can actually change those factors to develop better emotional regulation and better interpersonal relationship skills so that they can actually function better overall. And the program we're running here in Tasmania is called Stress Resilience and Functioning, or SRF for short.

And this is the culmination of nearly ten years of work for myself and then through Leonie Nowland, the First Assistant Secretary for Open Arms. And so these programs are pioneering because it allows us to bring interventions that aren't focused on a particular diagnosis, rather they're focused on a person and their functioning. We also are going to be running a parallel program for partners of veterans as well too.

And this is another part of the puzzle, I suppose, that hasn't been done in Australia and doesn't necessarily get done elsewhere in the world as well too. And this is the thing because as an individual, we rely on other people to actually be able to function and feel heathy and be well. So, the thing with this is, if we're just going to focus on the Veteran, the families get left behind. And so, the group, that family group, isn't necessarily going to be able to change and recover.

And so then you run the risk of what we call transgenerational transmission of the effects of trauma. And so, by running these kinds of innovative programs for veterans and their partners through a national organisation like Open Arms, it lets us actually have a real and meaningful impact on the veterans and their families across Australia.

JOURNALIST: What do you find, you mentioned the shared experience, what do you find doing this in the groups of six to eight people, and or lets people learn from each other?

JON LANE: The experience is actually incredibly powerful. And the reason for that is that on discharge, particularly for an involuntary discharge, people don't just leave a job, they leave a culture, they leave an organisation, they leave a whole huge social network.

And the other thing they actually lose is that personal identity of ‘I’m a soldier’. I mean, I joined the Army in 1989, so nearly 35 years now. And I still think of myself as a soldier, despite being a psychiatrist, despite working with Open Arms, despite working in universities and all the other sorts of things as well too.

So that core identity is incredibly powerful. When you don't have that group of people around you - that can make it really difficult for yourself and your own personal mental health. So when you put a group of people together and you put them in an environment that sort of reflects their own training experiences, then they actually come together, they can normalise their experiences, they can draw support from each other, and they can look up to the lived experience peer who's delivering the work and go, I want to be like that.

JOURNALIST: How adaptable would this program be to other states around Australia?

JON LANE: Well, the model is perfectly adaptable. So the model is specifically developed to be regional and community based. And so what we're doing here in Tasmania, for example, is having facilitators in those locations who can run groups as needed.

So they’re closed groups, they start, they run for eight weeks, two hours a week for eight weeks. And then when there's another group of people who are ready to go, then we can just run another group in that location. And so the other benefit of that is that you're actually introducing people to other members of their community that they might not get. And that challenges the social withdrawal and the isolation that you see in conditions like post-traumatic stress disorder. So it's got those added social benefits as well. And in previous groups that we’ve run, people develop quite close relationships and end up catching up on a regular basis for coffee, you know, going for walks or doing other exercise or things like that. So those are the kind of second order effects of these kinds of programs. And these, you can't get these from sitting in an office with a clinician like myself.

JOURNALIST: Are there many veteran support programs nationally that consider the impact of intergenerational trauma, or is that unique to Open Arms?

JON LANE: So most programs will consider that to a degree, but whether or not they can actually impact and influence that is another matter entirely. And so by doing a comparative parallel program for veterans’ partners, which contains a lot of the same content, but just with a specific focus on partners, this actually means both of them are speaking the same language and they're using the same skills and they can work together to improve themselves and their partnership and their parenting of their children and so on as well too. And so that is absolutely a first in Australia.

JOURNALIST: What was the impact of veterans having to travel to Victoria as opposed to being able to get help here in Tasmania?

JON LANE: So as a psychiatrist who has been seeing patients in Tasmania for at least the last decade, it can be really, really tough going interstate for a four week, you know, six week admission because your family has to cope by themselves at home. And, you know, anyone who's had experience of fly in, fly out sort of work or for us in the military being on deployment and those sorts of things, it's hard work running a family by yourself because your partner is away. And so not just, you don't just lose that support, but you add extra work because other people have to pick up the slack as well too. And that's why it's so important that we actually have services that are located where people actually are.

And, you know, again, when you think about those inpatient services, they're obviously very expensive. And so an alternative approach to fill the gap is to actually run community based programs because there's so much more lower overheads for that sort of thing.

JOURNALIST: How much of this initiative was informed by what you're hearing from veterans and their needs in Tasmania?

JON LANE: So pretty much all of this was informed by what we've heard from veterans and what they need. And in fact, personally, the reason I started developing these sorts of programs and, you know, went on a Churchill Fellowship to the US looking at these kinds of innovative interventions and then develop them was because in regional areas like here, there are not services. So me as a psychiatrist, for example, if I need someone to have intensive treatment, where do I send them? What do I do? The only place is actually interstate, whether that's Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide, Brisbane or whatever else. And this is why I actually developed these group based programs because if we didn't have the services and the clinicians outside of Open Arms with that expertise, at least in the community, we could have things that would get people functioning better so that they would need less intensive services overall.

JOURNALIST: Thank you.

GUY BARNETT: Open Arms just does a great job and really appreciate all the contributions and support of Dr Jon Lane.

JOURNALIST: Just on housing for veterans. There were some calls during the election campaign from the RSL for veterans specific housing projects. I think Labor made a commitment, is that something that the Government is considering at the moment to find housing solutions targeted directly at veterans?

GUY BARNETT: These are discussions that we've had with the Federal Government as well. Obviously, with the Federal Housing Minister and likewise, we'll have further discussions with Matt. But yes, these are ongoing concerns for veterans. Housing is a key, one of those challenges. And we look forward to working with the Federal Government, with the RSL Tasmania and with others in terms of supporting initiatives to deliver better housing outcomes for our veterans.

MINISTER KEOGH: So we do recognise that there's special needs for providing housing support to our veteran community, not just in terms of making sure that the housing itself is available, but also those wraparound support services that veterans need to get back up on their feet and accessing more mainstream housing solutions for them. That's a critical part of what we committed to at the last election through the Housing Australia Future Fund, dedicating $30 million specifically to support veteran homelessness and housing. We'll have a bit more to say about that shortly. It's been, it was in the Budget just handed down in May, that $30 million that will be allocated across capital as well as that wraparound service provision. But we've also been working with RSL Tasmania, part of our $5 million grant to them for their Veterans’ and Families’ Hub that they're setting up across Tasmania. Part of that project also involves them establishing some housing to support veterans as well. So it's great to see work already starting here in Tasmania around that with RSL Tasmania, but also we'll be announcing further detail around how that $30 million to support veteran homelessness and services to support veterans in that shortly.

JOURNALIST: If you could, would you just mind explaining the funding model for this specific veterans’ program?

MINISTER KEOGH: For Open Arms?

JOURNALIST: Yeah

MINISTER KEOGH: So the Open Arms service is provided through the Department of Veterans’ Affairs. What we've done here with this new model is provided the funding through Open Arms to roll out these programs across Tasmania.

As Jon explained, they'll be rolling out throughout the year so veterans can continuously access these blocks of programs as required. And that's an important element of how it's done. It's done on a demand basis that we fund and run these programs based on the demand we're getting from the community. And that's an important part about how we operate the Open Arms model is we make sure that we're funding the services to be delivered as they're needed by veterans so that they get the service delivery and the support that they need and deserve when they need it.

JOURNALIST: Thanks

END

Open Arms – Veterans & Families Counselling provides 24/7 free confidential crisis support for current and ex-serving ADF personnel and their families on 1800 011 046 or the Open Arms website. Safe Zone Support provides anonymous counselling on 1800 142 072. Defence All-Hours Support Line provides support for ADF personnel on 1800 628 036 or the Defence Health Portal. Defence Member and Family Helpline provides support for Defence families on 1800 624 608