Page 2968 - Week 09 - Wednesday, 12 October 2022
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cent of the time as quickly as that is possible to do, but safety must be the priority. I think it is also important to make the point that the vast majority of paediatric patients have in fact been accessing that space this year. I recently heard from a parent who attended Canberra Hospital ED with their very unwell one-year-old less than two weeks ago, and they spoke about the care they received and the excellence of that care. They did attend the broader ED and, following triage with the nursing staff, they were then moved to the paediatric waiting and treatment area and treatment was provided in the paediatric space.
I have also received a number of compliments from members of the community who have received safe and exceptional care at the Canberra Hospital ED. I am grateful, of course, for the hard work that our staff do there to care for members of the community of all ages, just like those nurses in our walk-in centres, who care for members of our community of all ages, now down to one year old as the minimum presentation age. Our nurse-led walk-in centres have fantastic advanced practice nurses and nurse practitioners who are able to treat people of all ages, down to one year old.
The ACT government has ensured that our health services are continually improving the care that they provide to children and young people, as part of our commitment to improving those health outcomes through both of our emergency departments—but particularly Canberra Hospital, as the centre for children and young people—and through our walk-in centres.
We are also expanding the Centenary Hospital for Women and Children, with a $50 million expansion, on top of the $624 million Canberra Hospital expansion project. The Centenary Hospital expansion will further grow services for the ACT and surrounding regions for women, children and their families. The Centenary Hospital has a dedicated team of paediatricians and nurses providing services to children and adolescents. Its expansion has been planned to enable the growing demands for health services to be met. As I have said, the critical services building will include, in its new, larger emergency department, a specific paediatric treatment care space, a waiting space and courtyard. We are also planning for services beyond 2024 when that opens.
We launched the ACT Health Services Plan on 8 August to inform on how we will continue to develop and re-design our publicly funded health care over the next eight years. The development and implementation of a child and adolescent clinical services plan is a key action under that. I recently announced the establishment of a child and adolescent clinical services expert panel to really drive that work to completion and to ensure that there is independent clinical expertise brought to bear in the finalisation of that work. Some great work has already been done by our fantastic public servants, ensuring that the community can have confidence in the end result of that.
I think Ms Castley’s assumption—and she said it again in the chamber today—that exposure to adults with a mental illness or alcohol or drug addiction who need to attend the emergency department for care is necessarily going to be detrimental is problematic and shows that the views of the Liberals and Ms Castley are fundamentally out of step with the views of broader Canberrans about recognising the needs of vulnerable people in our community. There is a reason that we have a separate paediatric space. It is important, but it is also important not to scaremonger
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