My Rights, My Decisions for Practitioners
The Network delivers My Rights, My Decisions (MRMD) workshops to workers who provide services and supports to consumers, including but not limited to clinicians, community workers and peer workers.
My Rights, My Decisions helps workers better support consumers when they become unwell. It achieves this by enabling consumers to work with their treating team when they are well to make decisions about their future treatment and support needs. By knowing and understanding consumers’ needs and preferences, workers can experience better outcomes and build greater rapport with consumers when they are receiving treatment.
Under the Mental Health Act 2015 (ACT), consumers have the right to put in place decision-making tools to support them and others if they become unwell. Provider workshops help workers to understand how to use and promote the following tools to support them in their work with consumers:
- Nominated Person – A Nominated Person is someone who helps a consumer make and express their decisions if they become unwell
- Advance Agreement – Relates to treatment preferences and what should happen at home with regard to dependants, pets, bills and so on, e.g. ‘Frank Jones will feed my dog’. Consumers can also provide any relevant information such as languages they speak or other illnesses they have
- Advance Consent Direction – Relates to what treatments a consumer agrees or do not agree to, including medications. Consumers can also say who they do or don’t want to receive information about them when they have reduced decision-making capacity.
These three tools are available for free as a Form Kit for anyone who wants to look at or complete them.
Please note that the ACT Mental Health Consumer Network does not have access to completed forms or records of who has forms in place. The back of the Form Kit provides information about where and how forms are recorded.
For workers who have completed the My Rights, My Decisions Train the Trainer workshop, you can access training resources from the MRMD workshop resources page.
For more information about My Rights, My Decisions workshops or Form Kit, email peer.education@actmhcn.org.au or call 02 6230 5796 or 02 6145 0072.
Workshop Request
To request a workshop for your organisation, please complete and submit the form below.