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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 2 Hansard (2 March) . . Page.. 547 ..

MR MOORE (continuing):

The advisory committee will next meet in March, and I understand that considerable work on the development of the operational protocols and the location options will take place before that time. Mr Speaker, the first meeting of the advisory committee is just the beginning of the process to implement the will of the Assembly. But it is a very important first step.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank all those concerned to date in progressing the matter. In particular, I thank my Assembly colleagues, the members of the advisory committee and the officers in my department for their continued support. I look forward to providing members with further reports on the progress of this exciting and important ACT initiative.

MR WOOD (4.31): I present Report No. 5 of the Standing Committee on Health and Community Care entitled "Respite Care Services in the ACT", together with a copy of the extracts of the minutes of proceedings. I move:

Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker, it is good timing, is it not? The Government responded to an earlier report of the committee and I now table a further report.

Mr Moore: You give us no rest, Bill. No respite.

MR WOOD: No respite? Well, I do not know whether you would qualify on the same grounds of many of the people we saw. Members of the committee, Mr Rugendyke, Mr Hird and I, saw many great services and heard about many great services in operation in the ACT to provide respite care to those who need it. We have been impressed by the range of services and the quality of those services.

As you know, those services are provided across a wide range of activity. They can be for intellectually or physically disabled people, or both; they can be in-home or centre-based; they can be for frail aged whose carers often need respite care; they can be in a family situation. Modern society places great stresses on families and sometimes there is need for children in those families to go off for a while into a foster situation or a residential situation while the families receive respite.

Circumstances like one where there is an emotionally and intellectually disturbed teenager as big as the parents, who is very difficult to manage and can fly into a rage, seemingly without reason, and present a physical threat to the family and to the school, impressed the minds of all of us. That family needs a rest from time to time to try to maintain some semblance of family life.

We are probably all familiar with families where an elderly parent is quite frail, or sometimes not so frail but suffers some aspect of Alzheimer's disease and needs constant and vigilant time - consuming care; or the youngster who may have ADHD or

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