Lacking Insight - Community Law

Lacking Insight• The Board must gauge whether the consumerneeds a break, and offer a short adjournment;• Mental health service workers must offerfollow up support and debriefing to peopleafter their hearings;• The Board and mental health service workersmust endeavour to ensure the Board processleads to improvement in the person’s situation,not mere maintenance;• Board members must receive ongoing training toensure that they do not become desensitized tothe impact of involuntary treatment on people;• Board members must conduct hearingsand ask questions in a way which holds theservice accountable;• Board members must not be unnecessarilyrepetitive, probing or insensitive in the way theyask questions – rather, they should focus mainlyon the issues in dispute and avoid unnecessaryquestioning about symptomology or othersensitive matters;• The performance of Boards varies. Boardmembers should be required to observe eachother and review the performance of peers.Legal representation• Legal and other advocates should act inaccordance with their primary duty - to actin an ethical manner on client instructions;• Free legal representation should be availableto all consumers who wish to have it;• Existing forms of advocacy should be extendedand free legal advocacy made available to allconsumers before, during and after hearings tofacilitate a range of good outcomes and exploreless restrictive options to involuntary treatment;• Legal advocacy services must be resourced toensure that all consumers have access to theprotections of the Charter;• Legal advocacy services must be resourced toensure that Koori consumers and consumersfrom culturally and linguistically diversebackgrounds have access to specialist mentalhealth representatives who are sensitive to theircultural issues;• Advocacy and mental health services shouldadopt practices that actively facilitate people’saccess to representation e.g. case managersphoning legal services when with the consumerat the case management appointment;• Legal representatives should be adequatelytrained in terms of the legal and service systemcontext of hearings and principles of humanrights and therapeutic jurisprudence;• If an order is extended twice the Board shouldrecommend to the consumer that they obtainlegal advice and should confirm that theconsumer has access to information aboutavailable legal services and assistance from thecase manager to arrange representationif required;• The Board should continue to work in acollaborative way with specialist legal services toachieve best outcomes for consumers.14