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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 12 Hansard (12 November) . . Page.. 4052 ..

MR WOOD (continuing):

Another factor is that that treatment needs to involve parents and others who may not be professionals. Mr Stefaniak spoke of the professional attention given by people working in government. They are professional. They are very competent, very skilled and very dedicated. I do not question that at all. But let us not forget that there is a significant role for other people - for parents, carers and others in our society - in working with these people.

MR SPEAKER: It being 5.00 pm, I propose the question:

That the Assembly do now adjourn.

Mr Stefaniak: I require the question to be put forthwith without debate, Mr Speaker.

Question resolved in the negative.

Debate resumed.

MR WOOD: I stress that this community values the work of those professionals. But the imperative is for a variety of services, and it is not always easy to accommodate that through having people working together in our bureaucratic structure. I recall when I was Minister and Education was providing certain facilities for young people, as was Health, and there were social workers somewhere else. It was not always easy to have a child with one case manager even; so the services were coordinated. The spirit behind this motion is that bureaucratic impediments because of the way we are structured not intrude into the treatment of individual children; that individual children who have this considerable need have their cases considered as a whole and not have to run around to different places.

A good example of the troubles we sometimes run into comes to mind. When I was Minister for Education, I had approaches from the Conductive Education Society looking for support. All they wanted was a room somewhere to run their program. The advice I was getting suggested that we did not need to do this, that the credentials of this body were not universally accepted and that, in any case, what government was providing was quite sufficient. When I went out to look at what was being done, I was mightily impressed. Parents were involved. They were working to a structured program. It was quite clear to me that the young children there were receiving quite considerable benefit from the programs that they were following. Yet the advice I was getting was suggesting that we did not need to provide any form of assistance - even a schoolroom somewhere - to these children.

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