NSW deploys mental health nurses to emergencies, but 24/7 rollout delayed

New South Wales announced a significant overhaul of how it responds to mental health emergencies on Thursday, committing $270 million over a decade to send specialist nurses instead of police to certain crisis calls. The reform emerged from years of pressure following multiple deaths in police custody, most notably the July 2023 shooting of Jesse Deacon, a 42-year-old man living with schizophrenia who was fatally shot by officers at his home after being reported as self-harming.

Mental Health Minister Rose Jackson and Police Minister Yasmin Catley unveiled a system that will establish a new team of mental health experts to assess triple zero calls around the clock, providing real-time clinical guidance to ambulance crews. The state will also create eight new mental health response teams, each pairing a paramedic with a specialist mental health nurse, designed to handle call-outs with a health-first approach rather than a law enforcement one. Yet the announcement carries a significant limitation: these new teams will operate only twelve hours daily and will not initially roll out across the entire state. Outside those hours, police or existing hybrid models like the Police Ambulance and Clinical Early Response program—which advocates have criticized for its narrow scope—will continue to respond.

Jackson acknowledged the constraint directly. "Mental health crises don't happen within neat 12-hour windows," she said. "They're things that can occur any time of day, any day of the week." She framed the $270 million commitment as a first step, suggesting the model could eventually expand statewide. The reform draws inspiration from the United Kingdom's "right person, right care" framework, which prioritizes matching the responder to the nature of the crisis.

Jesse Deacon's mother, Judy Deacon, now 82, has become one of the state's most vocal advocates for change since her son's death. She welcomed the announcement as a meaningful shift that might have altered her son's fate. "I think the outcome might have been different," she said, while pledging to monitor implementation closely alongside other families who have lost relatives in similar circumstances. Police will retain the lead role in situations where safety risks are acute—such as when someone is armed with a weapon.

Grace Cameron-Lee, a senior solicitor at Redfern Legal Centre's police accountability practice, supported the reform but emphasized that police training in de-escalation techniques remains essential. Police Minister Catley noted that officers receive mental health training, but stressed the obvious: "They are not mental health clinicians, and that has to be recognised." Dr Pramudie Gunaratne, chief executive of the Australian Society of Psychiatrists, called the reform "a stronger front door into the mental health system" but warned that a front door means little without adequate services behind it. She urged the government to expand community mental health support, cautioning that without sustained care, people will remain trapped in cycles of crisis and emergency response.

Jackson acknowledged gaps in the system, particularly in community mental health services, and said she plans to release a comprehensive analysis of the mental health system publicly—though she offered no timeline. The tension underlying the announcement is clear: a new triage system and specialized response teams address the immediate crisis, but systemic underfunding in community mental health care means many people will never reach the point where a better emergency response matters.