1. Please share this with parents/caregivers you work with - via email, your social media or posters/fliers for families
If appropriate, it would be much appreciated if you could consider copying and pasting this text below to: a) send an email to families you work with or b) make up a a poster/flier for your waiting /clinic rooms or c) put on your practice/organisation's social media pages - or your own personal social media/Linkedin pages.
Did you know that under Medicare parents of kids with mental health challenges can't have 'parent only sessions' - and so are unable to receive "parent-directed therapy" - from their children's therapists? This is true even though lots of evidence suggests this type of parent directed therapy is often *much more* helpful for young kids than therapists working directly with kids themselves.
Did you also know that because there are almost no 'parent only' sessions allowed for kids with mental health challenges under Medicare that parents can rarely talk about tricky stuff to their child's therapist without their kid listening in - which often makes things worse for children?
There is an easy fix to this which will enable better and faster care for children with mental health problems in Australia AND it won't cost Medicare or the taxpayer any more - just allow child therapists and parents together to make the decision whether Medicare mental health sessions should be a child session, or a parent-only session.
All national mental health reviews and organisations have recommended this in the past - but this change to improve small children's mental health hasn't been prioritised by politicians. Please consider going to www.fixmedicareforchildmentalhealth.com and adding your name to support this issue.
2. Please send an email to your MP
To find your federal MP contact details go to https://electorate.aec.gov.au - type in your postcode and it will bring up your electorate. Then google "federal MP for (insert your electorate). Their website should come right up and provide you with a name and email address.
Then write an email about this issue to them - feel free to copy and paste the text below:
To (insert the name of your local MP)
My name is XXX and as a child mental health professional, I have serious concerns about our inability to provide evidence based parent directed treatment for young children with mental health concerns given the 2 only parent only sessions allowed under Medicare. In case you are not aware of this issue, here is a summary:
- As you would be aware, under Medicare, all individuals - including young children - with a mental health care plan - must be treated by a mental health practitioner directly (except for 2 family and caregiver sessions). This means as child mental health workers we must work with young children (including 4 and 5 year olds for example) directly and therefore use ineffective 'talk and play based therapy' with young children with limited introspective capacity and motivation - rather than do what all the evidence indicates makes the most significant difference to these children's mental health - working directly with their caregivers.
- This means child mental health workers are being forced to work under Medicare in ways which are ineffective (a waste of tax-payers money), potentially harmful to children (because given that parents have little opportunity to express their concerns/children's trauma histories on their own they therefore do this in front of the child exposing them to psychologically damaging content) and finally demoralising for clinicians (leading to child mental health workers leaving the already scarce child mental health workfroce). This all occurs because Medicare rules prevent them from implementing evidence based and effective parent directed treatment - simply impossible in the 2 only sessions of medicare rebated funding allowed.
- Mental health workers have been proposing for years now that rules for the Medicare Better Access scheme should be changed to allow psychologists and other mental health professionals, when working with children under 12, to have the flexibility to use all 10 allowable rebateable Medicare sessions per calendar year to work with parents/caregivers - ie without their (under 12 year old) children present - when this is clearly required and agreed upon by their legal guardians, in order to provide evidence based parent-directed treatment for children’s mental health concerns
-This change will significantly increase the effectiveness and efficiency of therapy for young children’s mental health, avoid the significant harms currently occurring daily because of children being exposed to potentially traumatic content discussed by their caregivers within Better Access sessions and increase the longevity and sustainability of the child mental health workforce.
- This change is strongly supported by myself, and other Australian parents/caregivers and has been repeatedly recommended by national mental health reviews and all peak advisory bodies.
- Economic analysis and clinical research suggest this change will be either cost neutral or result in cost savings for the Better Access scheme, firstly as it will not require additional annual session allowances for children and secondly given its likely result of an increase in effectiveness and efficiency of child mental health treatment.
All of these claims above are supported by evidence in peer reviewed journals - you can read the details of this evidence on the brief within this website below:
www.fixmedicareforchildmentalhealth.com
Given this change is likely to *NOT* be at any cost to the scheme, it seems a very sensible option which would be very popular among families of children with mental health concerns and health professionals, and I would be most grateful if you would consider it.
Thankyou for your time
YOUR NAME