Australia’s carers play a vital role in maintaining the well-being of people with mental illness.

Carers have been reported to have the lowest well-being of any group in Australian society. The health of a carer not only impacts on their own healthcare costs, but also on their ability to care for the individual and the associated cost to the health and/or disability sector. For these reasons, many carers need access to sufficient and significant respite.

Carer respite is currently provided under a number of government programs, including the Mental Health Respite: Carer Support (MHR-CS) program.

Funding for  this program will be channelled into the National Disability Insurance Scheme, leaving mental health carers without sufficient respite support.

Carers need to access support as carers, not dependent on the eligibility of the person they care for, the care recipient.

Care recipients (with or without the input of carers) will have to plan respite for their carer through their NDIS packages. For those who are eligible for NDIS, no carer respite will be available through MHR-CS.

We want to make sure that funding for carer respite services is quarantined outside of the funding allocated to the NDIS.