There were 172 specialised mental health service organisations responsible for the administration of the 1,628 state and territory specialised mental health facilities (excluding private hospitals) during 2018–19. Of these 172 specialised mental health service organisations, 114 (66.2%) provided two or more types of services.
Of organisations that provided two types of services within an organisational structure, the most common pairing was specialised mental health public hospital services and Community mental health care services (69 organisations or 40.1%). These organisations accounted for over half of the beds and patient days (54.2% and 53.3% respectively) provided by specialised mental health public hospital services and over two-fifths (46%) of all community mental health care service contacts.
Furthermore, the majority of organisations provided specialised Community mental health care services (138 of 172, or 80.2%). A smaller majority provided specialised mental health public hospital services (117 of 172, or 68.0%), and a minority provided Residential mental health services (75 of 172 or 43.6%).
Consumer and carer involvement
Specialised mental health organisations employ mental health consumer workers and mental health carer workers for the expertise developed from their lived experience of mental illness and caring for people with mental illness. The definition used to describe this component of the workforce changed for the 2010–11 collection to better capture a variety of contemporary roles. Caution is therefore required when interpreting time series data for this workforce. More information can be found in the key concepts. In addition to reporting the number of employed workers, specialised mental health organisations also report the extent to which consumer committee representation arrangements are in place.
Mental health consumer and carer worker employment
Of the 172 specialised mental health service organisations reported nationally in 2018–19, 80 (46.5%) employed mental health consumer workers and 47 (27.3%) employed mental health carer workers. Queensland and South Australia had the highest proportion of mental health organisations employing consumer workers (16 of 21 for both states) and South Australia had the highest proportion employing carer workers (13 of 21).
Nationally, the rate of mental health consumer workers employed increased from 36.8 FTE per 10,000 mental health care provider FTE staff in 2014–15 to 61.6 FTE in 2018–19; an annual average increase of 13.8%. Over the same period, the rate of mental health carer workers employed increased from 13.5 FTE per 10,000 mental health FTE staff in 2014–15 to 26.6 in 2018–19; an annual average increase of 18.5%. Caution is required when interpreting these data though since consumer worker and carer worker FTE is relatively small, and therefore small changes in these FTE may have a relatively large percentage impact on the rates of change.
Consumer committee representation arrangements
In 2018–19, 107 (62.2%) specialised mental health organisations reported that they had a formal position on their organisation’s management committee or that a specific consumer advisory committee exists to provide advice on all relevant mental health services managed (Level 1 in the classification of consumer participation arrangements—the data source section provides full descriptions of each level). Levels 2–4 represent less consumer committee representation within the organisation.
The proportion of specialised mental health service organisations with Level 1 consumer committee representation arrangements increased from 59.1% in 2014–15 to 62.2% in 2018–19 (Figure FAC.2); and is substantially higher than the 16.8% in 1993–94, the first year of reported data. Conversely, the proportion of specialised mental health service organisations with Level 4 consumer committee representation (no consumer representation on any advisory committee) has substantially decreased from 46.7% in 1993–94 to 23.8% in 2018–19. This transformation to a higher proportion of representation essentially occurred in the years immediately following 1993–94, with 1998–99 being the first year in which over half of organisations were classified as Level 1. Between 1998–99 and 2018–19, the proportion classified as Level 1 has fluctuated, dipping to 49.3% in 2005-06, peaking at 65.4% in 2008-09, and remaining above 60.0% between 2015-16 and 2018-19 (Figure FAC.2).