Principal Community Visitor - Year in reflection

The 2024–25 year has been one of consolidation, reform, and sustained advocacy for the rights, wellbeing, and cultural safety of people engaging with Northern Territory Government mental health and forensic disability services.

Strengthening Foundations

We reviewed CVP processes and procedures to align with our legislated duties, operational capacity, and budget. This work shaped the 2025–2028 CVP Strategic Plan. These refinements have ensured sustainable, rights-based oversight and focused our resources where impact is greatest, for e.g. increasing awareness of the CVP for service users, ensure visit schedules include NTG Community based mental health facilities.

Legislative Reform and Policy Influence

The CVP has contributed to multiple reform processes, including the Disability Royal   Commission, the Youth Mental Health Roadmap to Reform, the Commonwealth Youth Strategy Review, and the development of the Mental Health Bill 2024 Exposure Draft. The Draft Bill proposes a modernised legislative framework for mental health care, with clearer principles for supported decision-making, strengthened human rights protections, and more defined safeguards for involuntary treatment. We welcome these advances but remain concerned that without dedicated resources, oversight, and forensic mental health infrastructure, legislative intent will not translate into lived safety and dignity.

Forensic Mental Health – Closing the Gap

The NT remains the only jurisdiction without a dedicated Forensic Mental Health Unit. People found unfit to plead continue to be held in correctional facilities alongside sentenced prisoners, a breach of rights and a failure to meet anti-discrimination obligations. We are calling for the transfer of the Complex Behaviour Unit to NT Health’s Forensic Services and equitable, trauma-informed care for supervised women.

National Preventive Mechanism and Cultural Safety

As part of Australia’s OPCAT National Preventive Mechanism, the CVP has brought NT-specific realities to national discussions on watchhouses as detention sites, bail laws, and deaths in custody. Cultural safety remains our anchor whereby care must be safe as defined by the person receiving it, addressing power imbalances and embedding First Nations leadership, interpreter services, and trauma-informed practices.

Resource Realities and Targeted Impact

With an annual budget of only $530,000 to deliver our legislative functions across the NT, our outreach is necessarily targeted but when we do engage, our oversight is highly effective, producing measurable rights protections and systemic improvements with the hope of an expanded budget to meet the demands of the community.

Acknowledgements

The achievements of the past year reflect the dedication of the CVP team, Community Visitors, Panel members as well as the continued cooperation of service providers and clinicians who work with us to improve systems and safeguard dignity. In particular, I would like to acknowledge Toni, Acting Manager of CVP, whose leadership and commitment have been a driving force behind our organisational reform. Toni’s results-oriented mindset  has enhanced program efficiencies and strengthened our strategic connections with services. We also celebrate the joyful arrival of baby Edie, our ‘CVP bub’, and extend our best wishes to Susan Burns as she takes parental leave

Our mission remains clear: to protect rights, strengthen systemic accountability, and amplify the voices of those with lived experience as the Territory moves into a new mental health legislative era.

Jeswynn Yogaratnam, Principal Community Visitor.