Broadmeadows and Northern hospitals will collectively receive more than $110,000 to improve the safety of their mental health wards.
Mental Health Minister Mary Wooldridge announced last week the successful recipients of round four funding in the state government’s Safety of Women in Care initiative.
Eighteen facilities in Victoria will share in $1.22 million for safety improvements, such as building women-only bathrooms, locks on bedroom doors and designated female-only spaces.
Broadmeadows Health Service will receive more than $66,000 across its aged and adult in-patient units.
The hospital’s in-patient unit for the elderly is a mixed ward. The funding will allow new doors and locks to be installed on all bedrooms at a cost of $32,560.
The hospital’s adult in-patient unit has been earmarked for a $63,770 spend to upgrade the outdoor courtyard with controlled access to the women’s area, install new bedroom door locks to enable them to be locked from the inside, fit window furnishings in the women’s lounge to improve privacy, and upgrade two women’s bathrooms.
Epping’s Northern Hospital will receive funding to upgrade the women’s courtyard with a safety fence and swipe card access and improve the women’s lounge with swipe card access and glass-brick windows for privacy.
These new safety measures will cost $46,260.
Ms Wooldridge said the facilities support some of the community’s most vulnerable women with a mental illness, “so it’s important that we provide them with the safest environment to support their recovery.”
NorthWestern Mental Health’s executive director, Dr Ruth Vine, welcomed the latest funding announcement, which would “help us continue to improve the safety of women within our mental health services”.
Ms Wooldridge said a re-elected Coalition government would add another $4 million to further enhance women’s safety in mental health facilities.
She said women should be able to receive treatment and care without fear of victimisation, violence, sexual assault or traumatisation.
