Chief Executive Officer's Foreword image: "Annual Report 2006-2007 cover image"
Donwload Full Version: DHCS Annual Report 2006-2007 (Adobe PDF document - 2877KB)
Over 2006-2007 the Department of Health and Community Services continued to work for better health and wellbeing outcomes for Territorians in line with Government priorities, including the implementation of the Building Healthier Communities framework.
This year was an extremely busy time for the Department and also one of remarkable and commendable achievement, and a year where the health and wellbeing of Indigenous Territorians, particularly Indigenous children featured in the national spotlight.
Child protection remained a key focus for the Northern Territory Government and the first independent and comprehensive review of Aboriginal child sexual abuse was conducted across the Northern Territory. The review's findings, the Little Children are Sacred Report, detailed 97 recommendations across 22 themes, addressing the child protection system, as well as broader social and economic factors, including housing, unemployment, offender rehabilitation, health, alcohol misuse and education. Many recommendations built on work that was already underway, particularly to tackle alcohol and substance abuse, improve education, and review child protection legislation.
A number of Departmental staff contributed significantly to the review process. Their recognised knowledge, experience and commitment to the health and wellbeing of Territory children and families, enabled our Department to make a valuable and important contribution to the Inquiry.
The Northern Territory Government's response to the child protection review - Closing the Gap of Indigenous Disadvantage: A Generational Plan of Action - has set the way forward for improved child protection and health services for Indigenous Territorians. It saw the Government commit an extra $79.36M to child protection measures and an extra $23.4M to health outcomes over the next five years.
The Australian Government also announced an Emergency Intervention that included health checks of Aboriginal children and a range of other actions to tackle substance abuse, and more recently announced significant funding over two years to provide increased health services in remote areas of the Territory.
Throughout this activity we continued to deliver our programs to improve health outcomes. We commenced an audit of progress against the Building Healthier Communities framework. The audit identified a significant proportion of initiatives had been implemented, allowing the Department to remodel the way forward by blending remaining initiatives with the Department's strategic priorities.
This amalgamation produced the Department's Strategic Directions 2007-09, a foundation document that doesn't attempt to detail all activities but works across programs laterally to identify five priority themes and actions:
- Healthy safe kids in strong families
- Tackling substance abuse and the damage it causes
- Pathways to healthy living in the community
- Develop a quality, integrated and intelligent service system
- Reshape and equip our workforce
In addition to these, I was pleased to reintroduce a set of values across our Department and re-state our vision and mission. These statements and our strategic priorities together underpin the way we will plan our programs, deliver services and interact with our clients and partners in health and community services.
A number of important achievements were delivered this past year. These include:
- a Rapid Admission Planning Unit to fast-track patients through Emergency implementation of Medchart;
- Advanced Medication management at Royal Darwin Hospital
- successful implementation of the e-Health NT Shared Electronic Health Record in remote clinics
- opening of a new Birth Centre
- a Cultural Security Policy
- formed a new Territory-wide Joint FACS Police Child Abuse Taskforce
- continued efforts to stamp out volatile substance abuse included the roll-out of Volatile Substance Abuse Management Plans at a community level
- improved chronic disease management
- updated the Healthy School Aged Kids Manual
- increased hearing testing in remote areas
- commenced the delivery of improved disability services under a $25.77million five year package
- excelled in our recovery efforts after the March 2007 Floods, particularly in Oenpelli.
Our staff are integral to our achievements and I will highlight here some of our staff who were acknowledged by the community this year, including Hellen Matthews RN and Charlie Gunabarra AHW who received Order of Australia medals for their distinguished service to improving health outcomes in the bush, and Rose Rhodes was awarded a Public Service Medal for her contribution to health services.
I'd like to thank all departmental staff for their commitment and for the way they responded to the challenges that arose in 2006-2007. We are well placed to meet the on-going challenges of improving health and wellbeing for all Territorians.
Dr David Ashbridge
Chief Executive Officer
01 September 2007