An Albury hairdresser’s homeless friend has been cast adrift on the streets of Canberra after another round of bureaucratic hand-balling.
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Salon owner Kate Young said she was “beyond the point of distress” after a health department official refused to call an ambulance for the young man who turned up on the doorstep of the Red Cross in the nation’s capital.
Ms Young received a phone call from a “lovely lady” who said she had the 24-year-old man with her in a “highly agitated state”.
She got on the phone to the Family and Community Services’ (FACS) Community Justice Program officer overseeing the 24-year-old’s case to organise getting him to hospital.
“Well, guess what, the department wouldn’t do it,” Ms Young said.
“I just don’t have one bit of hope left for (my friend) within this system.”
This latest stuff-up in a series of mental health system failures for the troubled young man saw him back on the streets on Tuesday night – despite his efforts to seek help.
“At least this time he had warm clothes and something to eat thanks to the Red Cross,” Ms Young said.
Once again the kindess of strangers has done more for this vulnerable young man than the mental health system that’s supposed to be able to help him.
Ms Young said a concerned Border counsellor had contacted her via Facebook to offer a suggestion for where her homeless friend might find accommodation and support in Canberra.
Unfortunately when she contacted that service she once again found the door was closed.
“They were sympathetic but couldn’t help because there’s at least a three-week waiting list for a bed and he needs to be assessed and every other thing,” Ms Young lamented.
In an almost unbelievable sequence of events preceding this incident, the distraught hairdresser revealed the young man had contacted her at 1.30am Monday morning and was so distressed she reported it to Canberra police.
Ms Young also contacted the “after hours” guardian at the NSW Office of the Public Guardian, which is meant to oversee his “care”.
“The after-hours woman just said she would pop a note on the system and (the man’s guardian) will see it in the morning,” she said.
“This was after I explained that he was distressed and I was worried he was suicidal.
“I said, ‘Great if he is still alive that will be fantastic’.”
The events this week follow a report on April 14 in which Ms Young condemned the system failures that had catapulted her young charge back on the streets “to flee the trauma in his head”.
She described her powerlessness at exhausting every avenue to get timely intervention and treatment from mental health services since Christmas, 2017.
The Border Mail has yet to receive a response to questions put to the public guardian in relation to this matter.