Inquiry into the forensic division of the NSW Mental Health Review Tribunal

Mental Health Coordinating Council’s submission supports a forensic mental health framework that balances community safety and victim interests with the care, treatment, rights, recovery and rehabilitation of forensic patients. It calls for changes that improve openness, victim support and public trust, while keeping the Tribunal’s focus on treatment, different areas of expertise and human rights.

Read the submission in brief

Law Enforcement Conduct Commission: Mental health and policing interactions in NSW

Mental Health Coordinating Council’s submission calls for urgent reform to reduce reliance on police in mental health crises and make health-led, trauma-informed responses the default in NSW. It highlights the need for stronger community-based crisis alternatives, clearer interagency pathways, as well as sustained investment in mental health supports and training for police and first responders informed by lived experience leadership.

Read the submission in brief

NSW Office for Youth: Strategic Plan for Children and Young People 2027–2030 – Consultation paper

Mental Health Coordinating Council’s submission highlights the importance of recognising mental health and psychosocial wellbeing as central to children and young people’s safety, development, participation and long-term wellbeing, and calls for stronger investment in accessible, community-based, culturally safe and youth-specific supports. It aims to ensure the final Plan addresses service gaps, improves pathways and embeds the voices and rights of children and young people with mental health and psychosocial support needs.

Read the submission in brief

Committee on Community Services: Inquiry into the Human Rights Bill 2025

Mental Health Coordinating Council has provided a submission to the Inquiry to support stronger human rights protections in NSW, with a particular focus on how the Bill would operate for people experiencing mental health challenges and subject to the Mental Health Act. Our submission recommends strengthening the Bill through clearer public authority obligations, stronger safeguards, improved supported decision-making, and more explicit protections in coercive mental health contexts.

Read the submission in brief

Joint Parliamentary Committee: Inquiry into Supported Decision-Making in NSW

Mental Health Coordinating Council’s submission to the Joint Parliamentary Committee on Ageing and Disability highlights the urgent need to embed supported decision making as a human rights-based, default approach for adults with disability and older people in NSW. It outlines key reforms to strengthen the role of the Ageing and Disability Commission, limit substitute decision making, build system and workforce capability, and ensure culturally safe, person led support across all service systems.

Read the submission in brief

Fair Work Commission: SCHADS Classification Alternative Structure

Mental Health Coordinating Council’s submission to the Fair Work Commission is the third relating to the Social, Community, Home Care and Disability Services Award. The alternative structure now proposed includes several amendments to the April 2025 Provisional Determination. We welcome the inclusion of an additional classification level to reduce the risk of pay reductions, along with measures to better recognise sector expertise and lived experience. However, some concerns remain.

NSW Pre-Budget Submission 2026-2027

Mental Health Coordinating Council’s Pre-Budget Submission urges for coordinated, cross-government action to address unmet mental health and psychosocial needs in NSW through integrated planning, care coordination, and genuine co-design with people with lived experience. The submission also calls for a 50/50 funding model for foundational supports under the National Mental Health and Suicide Prevention Agreement, and a meaningful shift towards a holistic, person-centred system that reduces fragmentation and minimises the pressure on public inpatient mental health services.

Read the submission in brief

Commonwealth Attorney-General: Disability Discrimination Act 1992 (Cth) Review

In July 2024, the Australian Government published its response to the Disability Royal Commission’s 222 recommendations. This included accepting, in principle, 15 recommendations related to amendments to the Disability Discrimination Act 1977. Mental Health Coordinating Council’s submission to this review covers in detail our recommendations for substantial amendments to the Act, which currently does not reflect contemporary views, language or satisfactorily interface across multiple state and Commonwealth instruments.

Greater Sydney Parklands: Callan Park Access, Movement and Parking Strategy

Mental Health Coordinating Council’s submission on the draft Callan Park Plan of Management highlights our longstanding connection to the site and its history of mental health reform. We support the plan’s priorities while calling for heritage buildings to continue housing community organisations, the park’s natural character to be retained, and urgent building issues to be addressed.

Evaluation of the National Suicide Prevention Initiatives under the National Mental Health and Suicide Prevention Agreement

The Department of Health, Ageing and Disability is conducting an evaluation of the three suicide prevention initiatives under the National Mental Health and Suicide Prevention Agreement (Universal Aftercare, postvention services and the Distress Brief Support trials). Mental Health Coordinating Council has provided its perspectives on how the system is currently working, and made recommendations for building a system that is more compassionate, coordinated, and community-driven, with a strong foundation in lived experience, equity, and evidence.

Fair Work Commission: SCHADS Classification Structure and Pay Rates

Mental Health Coordinating Council has provided a second submission to the Fair Work Commission, outlining the many concerns expressed by members and the sector about aligning the SCHADS (Social, Community, Home Care and Disability Services Industry) Award with the Aged Care Award. We suggest that this will result in multiple negative outcomes. We strongly oppose the proposed changes which in our view demonstrate a lack of understanding about the different skills and expertise that characterise the two sectors, which will particularly impact the peer workforce. The review was intended to correct ‘gender undervaluing’ of the mainly female workforce, however, what is now proposed flies against original reform aims.