To create a caring society we need to invest in the caring economy and all the people who do caring work, whether it is teachers, nurses, disability carers, mental health workers, housing support workers, and First Nations community workers, amongst many others.
Looking after our mental health
Investing in mental health creates jobs for nurses, psychiatrists, social workers and more.
It also helps those of us who need mental health support to stay in employment or education, and out of emergency departments and prisons.
Let's invest in:
- Expanding community mental health services and making sure communities have the services they need and no-one is left without support.
- Creating Aboriginal Wellbeing Teams to provide mental health care and create jobs for First Nations people.
- Building more prevention and recovery centres, providing more assistance to young people to stay in jobs and education.
- Providing more beds for people with severe mental illness.
Justice for First Nations People
A caring society is one that provides justice to First Nations people. We will work with First Nations communities to provide much needed support and jobs for First Nations people, including through:
- Boosting investment in infrastructure for Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisations to support indigenous health, mental health, family violence, housing and out of home care.
- Enabling the establishment First Nation Healing Places across the state, owned and operated by Traditional Owners of the land.
- Ending the mass incarceration of First Nations people and stop deaths in custody. Instead of expanding prisons, we can create jobs in helping people stay out of prison and live good lives.
Disability carers
The NDIS has the potential to transform the lives of disabled people, their families and carers. A fully-funded NDIS will create as many as 42,000 jobs in Victoria in the disability workforce.
But Victorians in need of disability support services who are not eligible for the NDIS are falling through the cracks.
Victoria can invest in:
- Boosting services for people who cannot access NDIS-funded services.
- Increasing investment in our community and public health systems.
Education for all
Create more jobs for educators, specialists and support staff with world class, free universal quality public education from early childhood to schools to TAFE and universities. A caring society will provide:
- Free child care and kinder.
- World-class public schools in every community.
- Free TAFE and university.
Caring for our elderly
Better support at home and better support in residential care will create 5,200 extra jobs in nursing, allied health and other supporting sectors. Along with more Home Care Packages, so that people can access the health, services and community support they need to keep living at home, nationally the Greens are proposing a $3 billion investment to:
- Increase hours of care;
- Increase the staff to resident ratios; and
- Ensure a minimum of at least one registered nurse is rostered on 24/7 in each residential facility.
Ending homelessness
Safe and secure housing is fundamental to a good life. The COVID crisis has shown just how important it is for everyone to have a roof over their head. As well as a big build of public housing to ensure everyone can have a place to call home, more services such as job support, alcohol and drug services, and mental health support need to be easily accessible to people experiencing tough times. To end homelessness we need:
- To build 100 000 new public homes.
- Provide easily accessible and available support services.
- Establish a homelessness court to ensure people experiencing homelessness get a fair go.
Caring for people with addiction
Appropriate alcohol and drug services are needed to help people live good lives. With AOD services underfunded and needing more workers there is more pressure on other health care, mental health, family violence and criminal justice systems.
We can create quality jobs and care for people with addiction problems with investment in:
- Ensuring areas of need including regional areas have the services people need;
- Provide more CALD liaison workers to better engage AOD services with CALD communities
- Increasing the ratio of available residential rehabilitation beds.
Dental for all
A healthy caring society provides care to our whole being, it doesn’t leave our teeth out in the cold. Unfortunately too many Victorians miss out on proper dental care. The average waiting list for public general dental treatment is almost two years, with some inner city areas including Melbourne, Brunswick and Richmond and many rural areas waiting almost 2.5 years.
The state and federal governments must work together to provide free dental health to everyone.
More immediately, an increase in Victorian dental funding by 25 per cent, will employ more dentists, dental nurses and oral health therapists to ensure more Victorians have their teeth looked after.
Free from family violence
Everyone has the right to live free from violence. Unfortunately we know that too many Victorians face family violence. There is already a shortage of workers in the support services for people escaping family violence in all its forms. More investment is needed to provide the complex and highly skilled services and ensure quality well paid and supported jobs to keep families safe:
- Fill the gaps in services, including more case workers; employment and financial support; and housing support.
- Build more public housing so people escaping violence can have a safe place to call home.