Rose Jackson and Yasmin Catley, the mental health and police ministers, announced on Thursday a statewide change to how triple zero calls are triaged, with a new team of mental health experts assessing mental health calls 24/7 in a bid to provide better support.
The change, funded by $270m over ten years, will also establish a hub providing real-time clinical advice to NSW Ambulance first responders and assisting them in making safer decisions.
This will be bolstered by eight new mental health teams that will provide a health-led response to call-outs and include a paramedic and specialist mental health nurse.
But this initiative will only operate 12 hours a day and won't be statewide.
Outside those 12 hours, police or existing responses such as the co-response model known as Police Ambulance and Clinical Early Response (Pacer) - which has been criticised by advocates for not operating 24/7 and statewide - will respond.
The mental health minister, Rose Jackson, said reform, which was shaped by the UK’s “right person, right care” model, was “only the beginning” and could be scaled statewide.
“We’re committing $270m as a first step. But I recognise that mental health crises don’t happen within neat 12-hour windows. They’re things that can occur any time of day, any day of the week,” she said.
Police and government had been under pressure to enact reforms after fatalities while people were in mental health distress. This included 42-year-old Jesse Deacon, who lived with schizophrenia and was fatally shot by police at his home in a public housing estate after he was reported to be self-harming in July 2023.
Deacon’s mother, 82-year-old Judy Deacon, has since become one of the state’s loudest voices for change in pushing for change, and has called for mental health experts to triage triple zero calls.
Deacon welcomed the change as an important first step that might have saved her son’s life.
“I think the outcome might have been different,” she said. “Me and other victims’ families will be closely watching and making sure it will end up making a difference.”
Police will continue to be the lead responder in instances where there’s a risk to safety, such as if someone is armed with a knife.
Grace Cameron-Lee, a senior solicitor in the police accountability practice at Redfern Legal Centre, welcomed the change but said NSW police training and operational changes that prioritise de-escalation techniques “remains critical”.
Asked on Thursday if the reform would include more training for police, Catley said: “Police are trained in mental health. That’s a component of their training in Goulburn now, but … they are not mental health clinicians, and that has to be recognised.
