Have Your Say: Victoria’s strategy towards elimination of seclusion and restraint

Have your say and help us to develop Victoria’s strategy towards the elimination of seclusion and restraint in mental health and well-being service delivery.

The Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health System recommended the Victorian Government work towards eliminating seclusion and restraint in mental health and wellbeing service delivery by 2031. To support this goal, the Royal Commission recommended that the Chief Officer for Mental Health and Wellbeing develop and lead a strategy to reduce the use of seclusion and restraint (Recommendation 54.3).

The Royal Commission acknowledged that work toward elimination will require significant resources, infrastructure, training, and support, and therefore envisaged that work would occur across the 10-year horizon for reform of Victoria’s mental health and wellbeing system.

This project – developing the strategy – is one component of the work towards the goal of elimination. The strategy will build on a long-term program of work in Victoria to reduce, and where possible, eliminate restrictive interventions; link in with Safer Care Victoria’s work to reduce restrictive practices and guide the direction of future action to reduce, and work towards eliminating, seclusion and restraint.

How to participate

The Mental Health and Wellbeing Division would like your input to develop Victoria’s strategy towards elimination of seclusion and restraint.

The discussion paper provides an overview of key information relating to the use of restrictive interventions in Victoria, as well as a draft vision, principles, priorities, and actions for the strategy, developed through early engagement. It then includes several questions that will help the department to further develop these key elements of the strategy.

You are invited to read the discussion paper and respond to these questions via the survey, or upload a submission to respond, by 21 July 2023.

In your survey/submission, you can choose to respond to all the questions or only the questions of most interest to you or your organisation.

Read more about Victoria’s strategy towards elimination of seclusion and restraint and steps on how to provide your feedback at the link here.