Page 1805 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 7 June 2006
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It is interesting because I have heard a rumour that the houses we built in Hughes—it is a disability group home now—are allegedly set to be converted into a respite centre, due to difficulties with the group home being compliant with OH&S guidelines as set out by Disability ACT. The trouble is that this home actually has residents in it. To have it as a respite centre, will that then comply with OH&S guidelines without some sort of major upgrade? I think we have to have from the Minister for Disability and Community Services a coming clean on this matter. If they are committed to assisting young people to transfer out of nursing homes and into appropriate care, what is being done in turn to ensure that appropriate accommodation and facilities are also being maintained across the disability sector in the ACT to take them up?
Perhaps Ms MacDonald, representing the government, can get an answer to that. Perhaps when she closes the debate she will scotch that rumour and say that this group home will remain as a group home and will not become a respite centre, because I think it would be a terrible outcome if that were the case. I might be a little out of date and it may already have changed its function, but, when we opened it, it was there for people with an acquired brain injury. If we could have an update on that, Ms MacDonald, that would be good.
It is a big problem. The federal government has acknowledged the problem. There is $122 million of federal money. Whilst you have to acknowledge what the ACT government has done in this budget, it does not say anything about building long-term accommodation for these people.
The problem with enabling more people with disabilities to remain in their home as they age is that they do age. Part of the problem—and it has not been recognised or looked at in the ACT—is what they call succession planning. For many older parents with a child with a disability—and that child might be anywhere between 20 and 40—it is not appropriate for them to be in a nursing home, but we do not have a different facility for them to go to. And we do not have any concrete advice for those parents as to what they should do in the unfortunate circumstance that they pass on—and ultimately they will pass on. We do not have a plan to look after their children.
We need to make sure that we as a caring community ensure that perhaps some of this money will go to that. But we also need to make sure that we get succession planning right as well, so that we get a handle on how big this problem is, what it is that we are likely to face and how we will face it. We all know it is coming. We certainly know that the rate of ageing in the ACT will increase significantly over coming years.
I think it is time for real changes to be made that will improve the quality of life for young people who live in aged care facilities but who are unable to reach their maximum potential because the nursing home setting does not provide for the unique needs of younger people. Let us face it, nursing homes are set up and geared to nursing home-type patients. You can still be quite active, you can still be very young, you can still have a lot of potential which you would like to use in the way that you would love to do as a young person. It is important that we give them their opportunities. If they are limited physically, then we need to liberate them mentally as much as we can.
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