Page 3713 - Week 12 - Thursday, 21 October 1993
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
Madam Speaker, I would like to start by thanking Ms Szuty for her help in putting this motion together. Over the past couple of months I have been involved in intensive community consultation, and during these sessions I have heard from various organisations involved with disabled children. The recurring theme was the need for an independent review of available services. I have introduced this motion today after listening to organisations such as the Down Syndrome Association, the Autistic Children's Association, Friends of the Brain Injured, the Cerebral Palsy Support Group, and representatives from the Conductive Education Centre.
It was evident that parents feel that they are not being offered real choice in the existing system. Some of the comments I will quote verbatim, because I think it gives a feeling for what these parents were thinking. Some of the comments I am not confident are right, but it does give you a feeling for what they are saying. One said:
There is no support for the brain injured. These people are put into geriatric nursing homes and there are no facilities for them.
Another mother said:
The Early Intervention Centre is useless. Some have never been able to get an appointment and others are only able to get one physio appointment every six weeks.
Another mother said:
In Sydney and Melbourne the facilities for spastic children are mind blowing compared with those in Canberra, where the parent's viewpoint is not listened to.
In some cases parents said that they had not been given the necessary information which would have permitted them to make informed decisions about the future of their children. It would therefore appear that there may be something amiss in the current system. Services are so overstretched that in some cases rehabilitation and development of disabled children are actually going backwards.
Parents tell us that in Canberra at the present time young children with severe disabilities who are clients of the Early Intervention Service are offered as little as one hour of physiotherapy every five or six weeks, one hour of occupational therapy every five or six weeks and one hour of speech therapy every six to eight weeks - and that is after they get into the service. This frequency of service obviously does not reflect the needs of often severely disabled children. I have spoken to some of the therapists employed in the system, who say that they simply cannot see any more children, that the system is overstretched. They have no more time, and they are concerned that they are not being as effective as they could be, due to the pressure they are under.
It is well known that the ages of zero to five are the most important for learning. If we as a community do not maximise the potential of disabled children during these important years, the cost to the community, both socially and economically, will be horrendous. Even something as simple as whether we can teach a child to weight bear can make the difference for that child between living in a nursing home or living in a group house later in life. Parents do not want a program
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .