“An Overdue Conversation - Best Practice & The Private Sector –Balanced Work & Investment for All”

This abstract will address the following TheMHS criteria;

“How does society pay for Best Practice in the private sector?
There is no doubt that excellent interventions are offered in prevention and early intervention programmes and services through private providers and in commercial contexts. How can society sustain the cost of ‘best practice’ in this format?

800 word theme abstract for Panel and Roundtable discussion

Preventive and early intervention action often takes place outside the mental health sector. Prevention in particular needs to happen in the context of everyday life: at work, in education, in non-mental health services and in other community settings. Many of the organisations and services best placed to take action for prevention and early intervention are in the commercial sector and are not resourced to make a best practice response.
Historically, most public investment has been in mental health hospitals and community based clinics. Although these services are crucial for treating acute mental health illness and facilitating recovery, they cannot alone build and sustain better community lives for the people they treat or for people in the wider community at risk of mental illness. Especially now as recovery-oriented and socially inclusive holistic approaches start to include employment and other community involvement as crucial parts of this new way of caring.
There are many talented people working in the mental health sector and across the wider world of commercial enterprise to make a difference for people at risk of mental illness. Some come from not-for-profit agencies; others are part of consumer and carer-operated services and some are working in areas like human resources.

They have been the source of innovative ideas and useful, evidence-based behaviour changing programs that directly influence social inclusion. Yet this valuable form of developing, implementing, delivering, and evaluating programs often goes unrecognised.

Whatever the source of good practice may be we all have to eat! Commercial reality dictates that no matter what legal entity one works under, whether not for profit or in private business, we must all work towards cost effective approaches in order to keep working and delivering the high quality outcomes.

This symposium will explore three key issues in the development of approaches to best practice with an emphasis on commercial employers as a primary context for prevention and private health insurers as a significant driver of preventive health initiatives.

1. Co-production and co-delivery of prevention and early intervention in private practice

Exploring the value of initiatives that are designed and delivered by people with firsthand experience of mental illness. How do people with lived experience gain the recognition and financial rewards they need to be able to continue to contribute to best practice? How can we recognise the costs and benefits of engaging people with lived experience as entrepreneurs and professionals rather than relying on free resources and ‘volunteerism’ which tends to devalue the contribution of lived experience?

2. Who pays for best practice in the private sector?

Exploring the challenges of engaging employers and private insurers in the implementation and evaluation of effective prevention and early intervention initiatives; who pays and how is the return on investment to be measured? How do we escape the ‘tick a box’ approach to implementation to promote real change in the way we address mental health issues?

Currently the business world is being inundated with offers of government subsidised programs and free resources. Is adoption of a single ‘free’ approach the best way to meet needs? What impact does it have on private providers with lived experience? Giving away resources, programs, people’s skills and expertise at a low cost, may cause further harm from a stigma perspective by devaluing mental health and all of us who are working to make changes. “People do not always value what they do not to pay for.”

3. Balanced investment: benefitting from the diversity of expertise

Can society sustain “best practice” by allowing private enterprise to reach out to the corporate and business worlds who have the ability to pay for services and resources?

NDIS has changed the way in which services are now delivered. An open market approach encourages the private sector to participate and lead the way in service provision. No one sector can solve these complex issues or meet demand on their own. We need to develop models of collaboration between private and public; between ‘professional expertise’ and lived experience. To be able to meet demand for services we have to at least balance the equation of who does what and how this is ultimately paid for.

A balanced investment across the mental health system is needed to help ensure that the critical resources needed to support people with mental illness are in place and that investment in specialist mental health services will be complemented by society investment in a range of formal and informal services which focus on prevention, early intervention and recovery.
A brief panel discussion, outlining the challenges, barriers, positives and negatives surrounding these themes will set the scene for a round table discussion. Questions from the audience will be taken and then time allocated for the sectors in the audience to work in groups in a collegiate collaborative approach to help brainstorm and work on different challenges.