Guidance on Mental Health and Wellbeing Principles

Under section 415(g) of the Act, the Commission is required to issue guidance materials about how the mental health and wellbeing principles (principles) should be applied in relation to actions and decisions.

The guidance is intended to drive safe and high-quality care for all people who use mental health and wellbeing services in Victoria, including designated mental health services.

To deliver this guidance, the Commission’s Lived Experience Team has led extensive engagement across the mental health and wellbeing sector to help inform the development of guidance on the principles.

A total of 24 mental health and wellbeing service providers contributed to the development of the guidance, offering perspectives from lived and living experience, clinical and quality improvement. This involvement included sharing how services are currently putting the principles into practice, identifying the barriers and challenges, describing how practice is monitored, and highlighting examples of good practice.

Sector partners have also provided input and advice throughout the development of the guidance.

The guidance outlines practical steps that services can apply at all levels - from leadership and governance through to workforce practice. It supports services to understand and apply the Act's requirements for proper consideration and reasonable efforts when applying the principles when working with consumers, carers, family, kin and supporters.

Promoting and complying with the principles helps protect and uphold the human rights and dignity of consumers, families, carers and kin, and support treatment and care to be provided in the safest and least restrictive way possible.

The checklist supports leaders and quality teams in assessing their services’ progress in embedding the principles, Act and rights, and in identifying gaps where additional work may be required.

This document also includes a table suggesting ways a ‘Plan, Do, Study, Act’ cycle might apply to each principle.

These matrices are intended to support services in using the existing experience of care data to understand how people are experiencing the principles within their service.

The principles are mapped to a consumer's experience in the Your Experience of Service (YES) survey, and with carer experiences in the Carer Experience Survey (CES).

This matrix identifies training modules or areas that will support staff to comply with the principles. It outlines training that is core, where we suggest services should aim for 100% completion – for example, training about rights under the Act - priority training (70% completion target) and specialist training (as needed).