Health and Community Services Union
| Press Release: Incident at Thomas Embling highlights need for Robust Workforce Strategy |
| 05 November 2009 |
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The Health and Community Services Union has said today that the incident at Thomas Embling Hospital last night, which has lead to the fatal stabbing of two clients and the serious injury of another, highlights the inadequacies of the State Government’s workforce strategy in the Mental Health Sector. “Thomas Embling is a world class facility with one of the most dedicated and well trained workforces in the state. If an incident like this can happen here, it really highlights the problems that the rest of the state’s core mental health services are experiencing” said HACSU State Secretary Lloyd Williams. “While the incident was unexpected, when you are dealing with people with severe and long term mental illness, coupled with the associated behavioural issues, unexpected things will happen and the workforce needs to have the capacity to deal with it.”Across Victoria, up to 10% of positions for highly trained mental health practitioners are currently vacant which either leads to a high level of reliance on agency staff that lack the expertise to deal with critical incidents or the existing staff have unsustainable workloads. HACSU has said the government’s recently released workforce strategy fails to deal with the immediate recruitment and retention issues that are endemic across core mental health services in Victoria. “What is required is a strategy that fills over 400 vacant positions in the next 12 months” said Mr Williams. “The needs of the clients in mental health facilities are extraordinarily complex and requires a specialist trained and stable workforce. The government’s recently released workforce strategy fails to commit to initiatives that would address issues of recruitment and retention and falls well short of providing the necessary ongoing training that this workforce requires.” The Union has praised the staff and management of Thomas Embling hospital for the way they handled the situation and are providing the necessary support to the staff that were involved in the incident. |