Kia Ora everyone, it’s wonderful to be here. I’m Maggie Toko, the Chair Commissioner at the Mental Health and Wellbeing Commission. Thank you all for coming along to our session today. We are absolutely delighted to have you all here with us today to launch and share our guidance on the mental health and wellbeing principles. But first, I'll hand over to Jacqui Gibson who is the Carer Commissioner at the Commission to do the Acknowledgement of Country.
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Thank you Maggie. Welcome everyone, I’m Jacqueline Gibson, Lived Experience Carer Commissioner. I would like to acknowledge the Wurundjeri People of the Kulin Nations as the Traditional Custodians of the land on which today’s webinar is being held. We recognise their continuing connection to land, water, and community, and pay our respect to Elders past and present... I’d also like to recognise that sovereignty was never ceded, and it always was, always will be Aboriginal land. and we want to acknowledge that the Victoria's Statewide Treaty Bill 2025 was passed in November 2025.
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Maggie: I would also like to recognise all those with lived experience of mental health challenges, distress, and alcohol and other drug use, the many wonderful people who work hard to change the system – and put an end to trauma and disconnection, stigma and discrimination. |
Jacqui - Here's what you can expect in today's session - we'll begin with the MHWB principles of the mental health and wellbeing act of 2022. We'll then talk you through our guidance, the process that we used to develop the guidance to ensure that lived experience was embedded at every stage and the guidance meets service needs. The overview is to introduce you to the structure and content of the guidance, this includes the legal framework, and what’s in each principle. We'll explain how the Commission supports services to comply with the principles through our complaints process. We will show you where the implementation resources are and how to find the guidance on our website. Just a few housekeeping items as well - the webinar will run for approximately 40 minutes. This session is being recorded, and we’ll share the recording in due course. In the meantime, we will also email out the slide deck to everyone who is attending the webinar. If you have questions, please use the chat. We’ll address them during the Q&A segment. If we can’t get to your questions, we will take them on notice. If you experience technical issues, try refreshing your browser or reconnecting. We have a survey to hear your thoughts on today's session. We will also send you a link to a survey for feedback about the guidance, summary, website and implementation tools in a few months. |
Maggie The Act contains 13 mental health and wellbeing principles. Mental health and wellbeing service providers, and other bodies, including the Commission, must give the principles proper consideration and make all reasonable efforts to comply with them in their actions and decisions. I think we’re all pretty familiar with the principles and know that we all need to comply with them. The guidance helps us put these principles into practice and embed them into our everyday work The principles support the primary objective of the Act – to achieve the highest attainable standard of mental health and wellbeing for every Victorian. The Commission has a function under the Act to issue guidance about how the mental health and wellbeing principles apply to actions, decisions and practice under the Act. This guidance aims to support the implementation of the principles and continuous improvement of Victoria’s public mental health and wellbeing services, and in doing so, to improve the experiences of people accessing them. As Commissioners with lived experience, Jacqui and I are very proud to have been co-sponsors of this project.
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Maggie: The principles support a mental health and wellbeing service system that values and listens to people’s preferences, and uphold people’s rights They reinforce that every person accessing a service deserves to be treated with dignity and respect. The principles support care that is inclusive and culturally safe, acknow edging that people’s identities and experiences shape how they engage with services and what supports they find meaningful. The principles also recognise the value of consumer leadership and partnership in creating system-wide change. I will hand over to Jacqui to talk about the impact the principles have for family, carers, supporters and kin. |
Jacqui: Along with consumers, the principles recognise the significant and important role of carers, families and supporters and our right to have our voices heard. The principles recognise the importance of acknowledging and valuing families, carers and supporters, recognising them as partners in care and decision-making. The principles recognise the role of carers in supporting consumers during their treatment and care – for example, supporting consumers to make decisions and advocating for them while also recognising carer’s own needs and perspectives. In exploring the carer related principles, the guidance encourages collaboration and open communication, supporting services to involve carers in ways that are respectful, appropriate, and centred on the person’s preferences and rights. Importantly, the guidance highlights ways to support carers – including support for their own wellbeing - as they navigate the system alongside the person they care for. Ultimately, the principles support a system grounded in trust, respect, and shared purpose — where carers, supporters, and kin feel included, heard, supported and empowered to contribute to care decisions. I’ll now hand over to Ali Pain, our Senior Consumer Advisor, who is the project lead for the development of this guidance. |
Ali - Hi everyone. I’m Ali Pain, the project lead for this guidance. Today, I’ll walk you through what the guidance is, why and how it was developed, and how you can access and use it. On this slide, you can see we have 2 documents, the full guidance and the summary. The guidance provides practical steps services can apply at all levels - from leadership and governance to workforce practice. The guidance is supported by the guidance summary and implementation tools that have all been published to our website. The link will be posted in the chat. (https://www.mhwc.vic.gov.au/guidance) Each has a different purpose – the guidance gives detailed information about how to comply with the Act’s requirements and about applying each principle in practice. The guidance is intended to support embedding the principles into practice at a systemic and individual level. The summary is primarily intended to support services and the workforce to understand the actions they can or must take in daily practice to comply with the principles.*Book icon visually shows when actions are mandatory under the Act We have also developed implementation resources such as the leadership self-assessment checklist. The checklist will help services identify gaps. and where they services are strong in their approach in implementing the principles. Other resources include a training matrix, a mapping of the YES and CES questions. We are finalising a scenario with multiple intersecting principles about the right to communicate and we are working on mapping the principles to the National Safety and Quality Health Standards. |
Ali: This diagram shows how we embedded lived experience leadership at every step and of the process in the development of the guidance. To deliver this work, we led a broad and collaborative engagement process. The design of the virtual networks embedded lived experience and clinical leaders from across 24 mental health and wellbeing services. Service reps were nominated and their valuable input made sure the information is practical, useful and accessible. We really wanted to capture perspectives from lived and living experience, clinical and quality improvement. This involvement included sharing how services are currently putting the principles into practice, identifying barriers and challenges, describing how practice is monitored, and highlighting examples of good practice. This is a visual representation of the project's governance. We wanted to make sure that we had lived experience at every stage. |
Ali: This project started with a questionnaire that services and sector partners provided comprehensive answers to, and the analysis of this was shared. We shared early drafts of Dignity and autonomy, Least restrictive, Supported decision making and Dignity of risk. Our process changed after the Budget announcement in May 2025, which reduced our budget and impacted the resources available to support this work. Based on the feedback from the first group of principles we commenced drafting guidance on all principles, including seeking advice on specific principles. We then tested drafts with a smaller group of services and sector partners who provided detailed and nuanced feedback and advice, often within a short timeframe, to help finalise the guidance, summary and implementation tools. Thank you to all our service partners for your significant contribution and to our sector partners including VMIAC, Tandem, the Office of the Chief Psychiatrist, Safer Care Victoria, IMHA, the Centre for Mental Health Learning, Victorian Transcultural Mental Health, and the Department of Health Lived Experience Advisory Hub for their expertise and advice in the development of the guidance. Thank you to our consulting partners from First Nations organisations, the Aboriginal Justice League, Victorian Aboriginal Legal Services and Bendigo and District Aboriginal Cooperative, the Commissioner for LGBTIQA+ Communities, Commissioner for Children and Young People, Family Safety Victoria, Foundation House, Yooralla, Nexus and other organisations. We could not have completed this guidance without your advice, expertise and assistance, and we are deeply grateful. Next slide |
Ali So here's the table of contents. If you haven't already accessed the link to our website in the chat, please do so. Throughout the guidance's development; services, consumers and carers, and workforce have all told us what they want included in the guidance. Part one includes the Introduction, legal requirements including explaining what giving proper consideration and making all reasonable efforts to comply with the principles looks like in practice and how service leadership can embed the principles. Part two is specific guidance on each principle. Part three is supporting services to comply with the principles. I’ll now hand over to our General Counsel Stephanie Cauchi, to talk about what giving proper consideration and making all reasonable efforts to comply with the principles looks like in practice. |
Stephanie Hi I’m Stephanie Cauchi, the General Counsel at the Commission. The Mental Health and Wellbeing Act 2022 sets a higher standard of accountability for service providers than the principles in the previous MHA 2014. Rather than simply ‘having regard’ to the principles, services must now make all reasonable efforts to comply with them and give proper consideration to how they apply in practice. In terms of 'making all reasonable efforts', mental health and wellbeing service providers must make all reasonable efforts to comply with the principles when exercising a function under the Act. So basically, exercising a function generally refers to taking actions. To exercise a function means to act in a way that is authorised, required or permitted by the Act. This understanding is similar to the way the Charter defines the functions of public authorities. Some mental health and wellbeing service providers have functions that are outlined in the Act, but for most other mental health and wellbeing service providers, functions are not always explicitly outlined in the Act. Generally, the functions of a mental health and wellbeing service may include: • the provision of mental health care, treatment and support • education, training and research undertaken by a service in relation to mental health and wellbeing • quality, safety and innovation activities and obligations undertaken by a service in relation to mental health and wellbeing • administrative obligations such as reporting (for example, to the Minister and/or Health Secretary) and • other requirements that may be part of a funding arrangement. Proper consideration is a mandatory process of deliberation when making a decision under the Act. This means embedding the principles into daily work — into decision making, policies, practices, and service delivery — so that they genuinely guide how services operate. Proper consideration under the Act uses the same standard as the Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities Act 2006. Importantly, proper consideration doesn’t mean that every decision needs legal advice or a complex process. It simply means going beyond a token consideration or a tick-box approach. Decision-makers must genuinely think about how the principles apply in each circumstance. These obligations work alongside the requirement to consider rights under the Charter, ensuring that decisions are thoughtful, fair, and grounded in a rights-based approach. In urgent situations, proper consideration may look different from situations where there is more time to make a decision or where the decision is especially significant. In urgent circumstances (for example, where necessary to avoid a serious risk to the consumer or another person), it may be necessary to rely on known information and existing procedures. This highlights the importance of ensuring that procedures are informed by the principles and that all reasonable efforts are made to understand and document a consumer’s views and preferences at all points in care. So, as an example, if a decision is made in an urgent situation, it should be revisited in more detail later in the person’s care and treatment, when the urgency has passed. The guidance will not tell you the ‘right answer’ to specific scenarios. What is important is showing how you have given proper consideration to the principles in your decision making and made all reasonable efforts to comply with them. Documenting reasons for decisions and what actions have been taken is important. |
Stephanie In the guidance, we have included a section that outlines the steps involved in giving proper consideration to and making all reasonable efforts to comply with the principles. It includes a 5 step process flowchart, a scenario applying the process, and an example flowchart showing how this process can be applied to a consumer journey and a systemic change. This process can also be used to assess whether service providers’ actions or decisions complied with their obligations.
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Ali
3 and 4 -Consumer experience and carers, families and supporters 5. Treating teams in practice 6.Reflective questions are included and developed for each principle 7. Scenarios 8. The ‘More information’ section
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Ghada – Hi I’m Ghada Maher. I’m the Assistant Commissioner of complaints at the Commission (any other introductory information the presenter wishes to add) Services are required to give proper consideration to the 13 mental health and wellbeing principles. The resolutions team works daily receiving enquiries and complaints from consumers, carers and families, who share their experiences when receiving care and treatment at public MHW services. When facilitating complaints to services, our approach is how issues intersect with principle(s), whether it is through each individual complaint that we receive, or whether it is through any systemic issues that may be informed by complaints as well as other mechanisms. When responding to complaints, we encourage services to consider complaints issues in relation to the relevant mental health and wellbeing principle(s). This is meant to assist: Firstly, to reach effective outcomes that meet the needs of consumers and maximise the impact for individual complainants Secondly, to increase the likelihood of driving systemic change by supporting services to apply the mental health and wellbeing principles in their approach and practice. And also to promote continuous learning and improvement within services For example, under the Dignity and autonomy principle, our Resolutions team supports consumers, their carers, family and supporters to understand their rights under the Act and the Charter of Human Rights. The team also supports consumers and carers to understand how the mental health and wellbeing principles apply in practice at services. The team uses the principles to guide conversations about complaints with consumers, carers and services. In part three the guidance gives a brief overview of the following:
Thank you to many of you in the audience today who have offered to work with us on our upcoming complaint handling standards. I’ll hand over back to Ali |
Ali: The guidance is an interactive and comprehensive document with embedded URLs and bookmarks so you can navigate your way within the document as well as external resources on other websites. It IS lengthy at 154 pages. Illustrations are included. I’ll screen share shortly what the guidance looks like, and ways to navigate it. We have the summary document as a brief resource. This includes a summary of Part one from full guidance, one-page summaries for each principle and 2 brief scenarios. We’ve also developed a set of implementation tools — these include a leadership self assessment checklist, mapping of the CES/YES questions to the principles and a training matrix. We are currently finalising a scenario of multiple principles about the right to communicate and mapping NQSH standards and NQHS Community standards. |
Ali - To access the guidance, just jump on to our website ( Guidance on Mental Health and Wellbeing Principles | www.mhwc.vic.gov.au ) We have published a webpage that contains the full guidance, and the summary document as downloadable and interactive PDF’s that are screen-reader friendly. For quick access to specific principles, each principle and its 1-page summary are available as separate downloadable files. You’ll find those in the drop-down menus. And finally, you can find all of this on our website — just visit https://www.mhwc.vic.gov.au/guidance to explore the full suite of resources. |
Thank you for your questions in the chat, we will review them and send answers in an FAQ format, just checking, the working group has selected a few questions from the chat that we have time to answer now. Thank you for coming to our webinar today – We hope that the guidance will support services continue to build on the aspirations of the Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health and that we can all continue the work of improving the mental health system for everyone who interacts with it. Our contact details are up on the screen now. Please use the leadership self-assessment tool and use the survey- we really appreciate your feedback. |
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