En Masse addressing the impact of mental health issues in the WA court system

WA Attorney General and En Masse address the impact of mental health in the court system. 

The Western Australian Department of the Attorney General has moved to improve the legal and social outcomes for people with mental health issues in the WA court system.

The WA AG’s Department has partnered with En Masse, a Melbourne based education and training company, to develop an innovative online program to increase awareness in the WA Courts and Tribunal Services (CTS) Division about common and, at times, complex mental health issues.

The training program for client-facing staff will help the CTS provide effective and appropriate support and service to clients who may be suffering from a mental illness or from distress generally.

Mark Dean, a former Perth lawyer and Managing Director of En Masse, sees a critical need to understand how our perceptions of those who are particularly vulnerable can perpetuate the inequalities from which they suffer, including when they interact with the justice system.

“Our brief was to create an awareness and training curriculum that assists court officers in WA to understand more comprehensively the psycho-social issues experienced by people who have mental health issues, as well as some of the cultural and other behavioural indicators that warrant special care and attention.

“The program provides decision makers and front line workers in the court system with a range of skills to enable a more mindful approach to dealing with people who have mental health and related problems including as a result of their cultural, familial and community experiences.  We’re confident that this will enhance the skills of people working at any level in the system to manage in a helpful way their interactions with particularly vulnerable people.  Ultimately, this should contribute to a more equal playing field for everyone as well as an enhancement of the positive perceptions of the justice system among people who interact with it.”

“We developed the training as eLearning modules which meant we could introduce some innovative instructional design elements to reinforce key learning outcomes and make the training engaging and interactive.”

Professor Colleen Hayward, Head of Kurongkurl Katitjin, ECU’s Centre for Indigenous Education and Research, worked with EN Masse in the design and delivery of the program.

“ I applaud the WA Attorney General’s Department on this initiative.  From the initial briefing of my colleagues at En Masse through to the finalisation of our curriculum, it was clear that the psycho-social issues experienced by Aboriginal people in WA, including as they impact on the experiences Aboriginal people have with the criminal justice system, gives me great confidence of the government’s commitment to continually tackling the inequalities evidenced by incarceration rates of indigenous Australians.”

The training specifically deals with:

• dual diagnosis (addiction and mental health issues) and its impacts on client health and behaviour.
• the extra responsibilities and pressures that carers and others associated with these clients routinely manage
• techniques for engaging and relaxing stressed clients with a range of mental health issues
• how to communicate court processes and main messages clearly, using appropriate simple language
• the questioning skills and the importance of empathy to encourage clients to share required details with the court
• the key criteria to assess the degree to which the client’s mental illness contributed to their offending behaviour
• the other supports that may be brought in to clarify level of client insight into their situation and their ability to make changes

Mark, who now teaches human rights and ethics in workplaces, believes that initiatives such as this go a long way to providing a human rights based solution, a solution that respects and protects individual human rights, and provides especially vulnerable people with care and understanding when they need it most.

The initiative was launched on 19th October 2011, coinciding with the WA Mental Health week and will be progressively made available to court staff.

Fact File

• Around 1 in 5 Australians, at any given time, are experiencing mental health symptoms[1]
• Approximately 45% of Australians (between 16 and 85) have experienced a mental disorder in any given year.[2]
• Approximately 26% of young Australians (between 16 and 24 years of age) experience a mental disorder at some point in their lives[3]
• Young people with mental disorders are more likely to misuse drugs than those without a mental disorder (36% compared with 7%)[4]
• 25.5% of the prison population in Australia is Indigenous.  Aboriginal people make up 1.9% of the adult Australian population[5]

En Masse delivers workplace education and training programs to achieve business and cultural transformation based on awareness and better understanding of human rights principles.

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For more information on human rights based workplace education and training and organisational culture contact Julia Nelson on (03) 9827 1388 or julia.nelson@enmasse.com.au