Statewide Service for Mental Health and Addiction Consultation
Many people living with co-occurring problems experience difficulties navigating alcohol and other drug (AOD) and mental health services across multiple, fragmented service systems.
To fix this broken system and provide people living with substance use or addiction and mental illness the high-quality integrated treatment they need and deserve, the Royal Commission into Victoria's Mental Health System (2021) recommended that all mental health and wellbeing services provide integrated treatment, care and support to people living with mental illness and substance use or addiction so that they do not exclude individuals living with substance use or addiction from accessing treatment.
The Royal Commission also recommended the establishment of a new Statewide specialist service to support this work. The Victorian Government appointed Turning Point as the Statewide Service Lead in March 2022, which will provide primary consultation for consumers, secondary consultation, education and training for health practitioners, and interdisciplinary research. This service launched in April 2023 as the Hamilton Centre (www.hamiltoncentre.org.au).
In September- December 2022, the Statewide Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (Hamilton Centre) worked in collaboration with Monash University’s Design Health Collab to undertake consultation workshops to support the establishment of the Hamilton Centre.
These workshops brought together more than forty stakeholders from across Victoria, that included mental health practitioners, Alcohol and other drug (AOD) practitioners, clinical leaders, peer workers and lived experience advocates to discuss the design of a best practice model of integrated care to support individuals with co-occurring mental illness and addiction. This research and the contributions of participants, will support the Hamilton Centre as they work toward developing a best practice model of integrated care for people with co-occurring substance use or addiction and mental illness.
What we heard during these workshops is collated here in the Statewide Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (Hamilton Centre) Consultation Report, and one-page summaries of the key findings.