May
20, 2003
Mental
Health - No Answers on Funding
Health
Minister Collin Hansen and Minister of State Gulzar Cheema
admitted that they have no way of assuring how much money
will be spent on mental health.
On budget
day the "service plan" for the Ministry of Health
Services was delayed due to the federal funding announcement
just days before the budget. The interim plan that was tabled
in February was recently replaced with a document that claims
that $1.067 billion will be spent on mental health services
in 2003-04. If that is true, one should be able to trace
that amount through the budget and financial statements
of the government and its agencies, the health authorities.
After extensive questioning by Joy MacPhail and Jenny Kwan
in legislative debate on Thursday, May 15th, Health Minister
Collin Hansen admitted that he really doesn't know how
much the health authorities will decide to spend on mental
health. Hansen, Cheema and Whittred signed off on the
service plan saying that they are accountable. How can they
be accountable when they admit that they have no way of
assuring how the money will be spent, or whether what they
identify as money for mental health will be spent on something
completely unrelated?
On May
15th Hansen said:
"We
have designed a population needs-based funding formula
that ensures the health authorities get a fair allocation
of the health budget to manage the range of health care
delivery challenges that they have in their regions. Included
in that is mental health. They then make the determination
as to how they can best meet the needs of their population,
because I'm the first one to admit that a health care
delivery system that we designed to work in Victoria is
not necessarily going to work in Vanderhoof or in Smithers.
We have allowed for that regional difference in the approaches
to how mental health services are delivered."
"We
want to make sure we get good outcomes, and that's why
so much effort is focused on measuring outcomes rather
than measuring the inputs. Are there accountabilities?
Yes. We are able to report through the health authorities,
and when they come out with their final year-end financial
statements - which are in the process of being finalized
- the member can look back in terms of how they allocated
the moneys that we flowed to them through their population
needs-based funding. But we are not, in our budgets in
the Ministry of Health Services, dictating to the health
authorities that they have to spend X amount of dollars
in X centre or in X community or in delivering a particular
program, because we want to make sure they have the flexibility
to deliver programs at the regional and local level that
actually meet the needs of the people who live there."
People
in the community know that the health authorities have cut
the budget for dozens of community based mental health facilities.
In legislative debate, MacPhail and Kwan attempted to get
the ministers to answer a simple question about funding
for the Arrowhead Centre Society on the Sunshine Coast.
No one in government could or would answer. There is no
accountability in the Campbell government for mental health,
or for much else. Where "outcome measurements"
do exist they frequently aren't independent of government
and aren't available until two or more years after the fact.
In the meantime, people on the ground know that programs
are being cut and that services people need no longer exist.
Mental health drop-in programs are disappearing.
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