The delivery of mental health support at Bandyup Women's Prison will be significantly improved with the creation of a new $2.4 million dedicated mental health unit.
The 32-bed unit will provide more intensive support than is available in the mainstream prison and will assist transition prisoners back to either the mainstream prison or to the community using trauma-informed and recovery-focused programs and care plans.
It will be the first time that the prison has had a dedicated mental health unit in its 50-year history.
The investment in further mental health services follows the highly successful introduction of the ground-breaking Wandoo Rehabilitation Prison for women, which has helped more than 100 women with their drug addiction in the last two years.
There has also been a 30 per cent increase in the number of full-time equivalents for psychological health services, which includes psychologists and social workers across the custodial estate.
The infrastructure upgrades to create the Bandyup mental health unit will be completed in two stages with the High Dependency Area expected to be complete by late January 2021 and the remaining works completed in early April 2021.
As stated by Corrective Services Minister Francis Logan:
"This new $2.4 million mental health unit has been needed at Bandyup Women's Prison for some time so I am very pleased that the McGowan Government's sound fiscal management has given us this opportunity to commit the necessary funding to make it possible.
"It has a been a long road in reforming our State's corrective services and building the necessary infrastructure to address the inherited overcrowding crisis.
"We are now also better able to manage the State's female prison population after the return of Melaleuca Prison back to public hands, which has created more opportunities to move female prisoners to facilities that can better meet their needs.
"This new 32-bed mental health unit at Bandyup will provide therapeutic and counselling support for prisoners with mental illness that cannot be adequately addressed in the mainstream population.
"In turn, this will help the rehabilitation and management of prisoners across the board by managing cohorts according to their needs."
