Mental Health Carers Australia welcomes the release of the Not Before Time: Lived Experience-Led Justice and Repair report.

The report, which advises Victoria’s mental health Minister on how to formally acknowledge harm in the mental health system, has national implications. Families, carers, and supporters across Australia are harmed by mental health systems that either underreach in their support, are ineffective, or overreach in encroaching on the rights of mental health consumers in their life.

The recommendations for a Restorative Justice Process and public apologies are significant, ground-breaking, and entirely pragmatic. A Restorative Justice Process will provide families, carers and supporters an opportunity to share the harm they have endured in their interactions with the system and as a consequence of the system.  It will be an opportunity for the Victorian Government to hear and record these harms, to develop a shared understanding with the mental health sector, and to move forward to a better mental health system based on relational recovery. Public apologies following a Restorative Justice Process will not mark an end-point, but rather a beginning point, for  mental health reform.

We support calls for these recommendations in Victoria, while also encouraging governments across Australia to consider them in their jurisdictions.

Click here for more information: https://www.livedexperiencejustice.au/