Submissions

In this review, QAMH acknowledges the positive impact the Human Rights Act (the Act) 2019 for Queensland has had on parliament and public entities. We recommend it is further strengthened by improving parliamentary processes, and the disputes resolution process. QAMH also requests community mental health services and family/carer supports are adequately funded to provide high quality human rights led services for those in need. Coercive practices continue to be used pervasively in mental health services and we ask that a human rights lens be adopted in practice to ensure alternative treatment options are explored, made available and used.

In this submission, we make the following key recommendations:

1. Adequately fund community mental health services to provide human rights led based interventions. Use a human rights framework to provide support for carers and family members who look after loved ones with mental health challenges
2. Establish a participation duty within the Act to enable people with lived or living experience of mental health challenges to be involved in making decisions that directly or disproportionately affect their rights,
3. The Queensland Government establishes and resources a Chief Lived Experience Officer

Additional Human rights are added to the Act:

1. Rights to social determinants of health
2. Right to self-determination
3. Right to early intervention and preventative health care
4. Right to choose to participate in paid employment
5. Right to be treated with empathy and compassion when engaging with service
   systems to minimise system-related trauma

• Amend the current override provision in the Act to ensure that the Act can only be overridden in genuine exceptional circumstances
• Ensure human rights are considered through all parliamentary processes including amendments to Bills
• Improve the dispute resolution process by adopting a “no rights without remedy” framework including the opportunity for compensation. Review current complaints to identify barriers to progressing complaints for vulnerable cohorts, such as people in mental distress
• Provide specialised training to frontline practitioners that includes case examples to help workers better understand how to practically implement the Act in their work setting
• Require public entities to demonstrate evidence of the implementation of human rights in practice
• Independent Patient Rights Advisors within hospitals and the health system be independently reviewed.