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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 10 Hansard (5 September) . . Page.. 3181 ..

MRS CARNELL (continuing):

Currently, 142 people receive accommodation support services, 12 people with high support needs live at Chapman Hostel, and 130 people are accommodated in 37 group houses spread across the ACT. What we have is an increase in group houses from 21 in 1993 to 37 for people with disabilities today. That is a quite impressive record.

The health of clients is an important factor affecting quality of life and, therefore, is of central concern to the disability program from all sorts of perspectives. Through the reform process, a number of actions have been taken to improve the health status of clients and to establish systems where good health, in its broadest sense, is promoted by staff and clients. I think one of the things Ms Tucker particularly forgets is that people with disabilities are living in residential accommodation, residential accommodation that is their home, in situations where they have the same rights as everybody else. Their health is not necessarily worse than anybody else's in the community; in many cases, it may even be better. The fact is that they have not horrible infectious diseases that require them to be kept at arm's length from the community. They have exactly the same problems as the rest of us in the community. That means that occasionally they get a cold, occasionally they might get something a little more infectious. As in any family situation, when somebody has an infectious condition, they may be excluded from the rest of the family so as not to allow the infection to spread, but in normal circumstances that simply is not the case.

In normal circumstances, the support staff in those houses are there to support them, not to be their keepers, not to don plastic aprons, not to put on face masks and goggles every time somebody may be incontinent or whatever. The reality is that mothers all over the community, and fathers, for that matter, change nappies every day and do not don full protective clothing when they do so, the reason being that there is no need to. Sensible hand protection, sensible disinfection and normal hygiene are quite enough to handle almost all circumstances in a residential situation. There is no need, with proper, sensible hygienic training, with sensible basic first aid equipment, to go to any further lengths. The fact is that we are not talking about people in a hospital. We are not talking about a situation where these homes are rife with staphylococcus or any nasty infectious diseases.

Ms Tucker: I acknowledged all that, Mrs Carnell. You did not listen to what I was saying.

MRS CARNELL: I have absolutely no idea, then, why on earth Ms Tucker continues to go on with comments about plastic aprons, masks and all sorts of other equipment.

Mr De Domenico: Is someone leaking to her?

MRS CARNELL: We will not even get into that situation. We had today from the Greens a press release which indicated that people in Disability Services - the clients, the staff - were at risk. It made a number of allegations. In Ms Tucker's speech she acknowledged that they were allegations. She acknowledged that these things simply were not proven and that there is an appropriate mechanism going on to determine whether some of these allegations are true or false.

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