{"id":5002,"date":"2026-08-02T10:28:28","date_gmt":"2026-08-02T10:28:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lumeamara.online\/?p=5002"},"modified":"2026-08-02T10:28:29","modified_gmt":"2026-08-02T10:28:29","slug":"nsw-to-send-paramedics-not-police-to-some-mental-health-emergencies-after-multiple-deaths","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lumeamara.online\/?p=5002","title":{"rendered":"NSW to send paramedics not police to some mental health emergencies after multiple deaths"},"content":{"rendered":"<figcaption>A <a href=\"https:\/\/lumeamara.online\/?p=4972\" title=\"WVU Medicine hosts Health and Wellness Day\">health<\/a>-led response to &lt;a href=&quot;https:\/\/lumeamara.online\/?p=4981&quot; title=&quot;How children talk can indicate risk for future <a href=\"https:\/\/lumeamara.online\/?p=4978\" title=\"Menopause on the brain: Your questions about mental health and cognition answered\">mental health<\/a> problems&#8221;&gt;mental health<\/a> emergencies will change the way triple zero calls are triaged and provide clinical advice to first responders in NSW. Photograph: Flavio Brancaleone\/AAP<\/figcaption><figcaption>A health-led response to mental health emergencies will change the way triple zero calls are triaged and provide clinical advice to first responders in NSW. Photograph: Flavio Brancaleone\/AAP<\/figcaption>NSW to send paramedics not police to some mental health emergencies after multiple deaths<\/p>\n<p>Mental health experts to triage triple zero calls, but not all of the changes will be implemented 24\/7 or statewide<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\n<p>Follow our Australia news live blog for latest updates<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>Get our breaking news email, <a href=\"https:\/\/app.adjust.com\/w4u7jx3\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">free app<\/a> or daily news podcast<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>New South Wales will send specialist nurses rather than police to some mental health emergencies after the state announced long-fought-for reform in the wake of multiple deaths at the hands of police<\/p>\n<p>Rose Jackson and Yasmin Catley, the mental health and police ministers, announced on Thursday a statewide change to how triple zero calls are triaged, with a new team of mental health experts assessing mental health calls 24\/7 in a bid to provide better support<\/p>\n<p>The change, funded by $270m over ten years, will also establish a hub providing real-time clinical advice to NSW Ambulance first responders and assisting them in making safer decisions<\/p>\n<p>This will be bolstered by eight new mental health teams that will provide a health-led response to call-outs and include a paramedic and specialist mental health nurse. But this initiative will only operate 12 hours a day and won\u2019t be statewide<\/p>\n<p>Sign up for the Breaking News Australia email<\/p>\n<p>Outside those 12 hours, police or existing responses such as the co-response model known as Police Ambulance and Clinical Early Response (Pacer) \u2013 which has been criticised by advocates for not operating 24\/7 and statewide \u2013 will respond<\/p>\n<p>The mental health minister, Rose Jackson, said reform, which was shaped by the UK\u2019s \u201cright person, right care\u201d model, was \u201conly the beginning\u201d and could be scaled statewide<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019re committing $270m as a first step. But I recognise that mental health crises don\u2019t happen within neat 12-hour windows. They\u2019re things that can occur any time of day, any day of the week,\u201d she said<\/p>\n<p>Police and government had been under pressure to enact reforms after fatalities while people were in mental health distress. This included 42-year-old Jesse Deacon, who lived with schizophrenia and was fatally shot by police at his home in a public housing estate after he was reported to be self-harming in July 2023<\/p>\n<p>No mental health training, no warning, no plan: what led to the fatal police shooting of Jesse Deacon?<br \/>\nRead more<\/p>\n<p>Deacon\u2019s mother, 82-year-old Judy Deacon, has since become one of the state\u2019s loudest voices for change in pushing for change, and has called for mental health experts to triage triple zero calls<\/p>\n<p>Deacon welcomed the change as an important first step that might have saved her son\u2019s life<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think the outcome might have been different,\u201d she said. \u201cMe and other victims\u2019 families will be closely watching and making sure it will end up making a difference.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Police will continue to be the lead responder in instances where there\u2019s a risk to safety, such as if someone is armed with a knife<\/p>\n<p>Grace Cameron-Lee, a senior solicitor in the police accountability practice at Redfern Legal Centre, welcomed the change but said NSW police training and operational changes that prioritise de-escalation techniques \u201cremains critical\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Asked on Thursday if the reform would include more training for police, Catley said: \u201cPolice are trained in mental health. That\u2019s a component of their training in Goulburn now, but \u2026 they are not mental health clinicians, and that has to be recognised<\/p>\n<p>skip past newsletter promotion<\/p>\n<p>after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis model is exactly what we need to ensure that those people who are experiencing a mental health incident get the right care.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Dr Pramudie Gunaratne, the chief executive of the Australian Society of Psychiatrists, also welcomed the reform, describing it as \u201ca stronger front door into the mental health system\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But, she said, \u201ca front door is only useful if there\u2019s a house behind it\u201d and urged more funding for community mental health support<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWithout enough community mental health services, people will still find themselves stuck in the cycle of crisis, emergency response and discharge, instead of receiving the sustained care they need to recover,\u201d she said<\/p>\n<p>Jackson has been under pressure to release analysis into the mental health system which is expected to have outlined the re<\/p>\n<p>She said on Thursday she planned to release the report publicly but didn\u2019t give a timeline<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere are gaps in the system, particularly in community mental health care. And yes, this is about a different response for crisis and emergency \u2026 It\u2019s obviously preferable if we can invest earlier so that we don\u2019t get to that crisis point.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Explore more on these topicsShare<br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/syndication.theguardian.com\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Faustralia-news%2F2026%2Fjul%2F30%2Fnsw-to-send-paramedics-not-police-to-some-mental-health-emergencies-after-multiple-deaths&amp;type=article&amp;internalpagecode=australia-news\/2026\/jul\/30\/nsw-to-send-paramedics-not-police-to-some-mental-health-emergencies-after-multiple-deaths\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Reuse this content<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Mental health experts to triage triple zero calls, but not all of the changes will be implemented 24\/7 or statewide<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5004,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[58,613,614,612,615],"class_list":["post-5002","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mental-health","tag-mental","tag-paramedics","tag-police","tag-send","tag-some"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lumeamara.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5002","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lumeamara.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lumeamara.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lumeamara.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lumeamara.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5002"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lumeamara.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5002\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5003,"href":"https:\/\/lumeamara.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5002\/revisions\/5003"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lumeamara.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5004"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lumeamara.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lumeamara.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lumeamara.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}