Page 3942 - Week 10 - Thursday, 28 August 2008
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am saying here today, Mr Assistant Speaker, is not a criticism of the staff but for the most part a criticism of the government for failing to set the priorities correctly and give people the flexibility they need to provide services.
I was recently approached by a constituent who has a child with Asperger’s syndrome. She was looking for some respite assistance because she has taken leave to study. She was actually looking for some out-of-home respite care for her child so that she could devote herself to complete her studies and increase her employability. What she actually asked for was some assistance to send her son to after-school care some afternoons a week. The answer came back: “Absolutely and definitively no. We will have someone come into your house and look after your child.” That was a much more expensive process but they would not actually assist the family with covering the costs of after-school care, which would have been at his own school where he knew people and things like that, because that was not within the guidelines.
What we see in this instance, and we see it often, is a lack of flexibility, a lack of capacity to think outside the square. We do not have direction from the top that will provide people with the flexibility to provide a service that actually addresses the needs of the people on the ground. We have a tick-box approach which says, “Well, if it is respite it has to come in this form irrespective of the needs and the actual request of the family.” Despite representations, the family has not been able to change the arrangements in any way and they are effectively without respite.
In the last couple of months I have had brought to my attention two very serious cases in relation to emergency surgery at the Canberra Hospital for people who have had broken bones. In one case, a quite young boy in his early teens broke his arm in a sporting accident on a Thursday afternoon. I was rung by a constituent on my mobile phone on Saturday afternoon. The constituent was in complete despair because for the third day in a row her grandson had been sent home from the hospital still with a broken arm, still unset.
He had been forced to fast on and off for most of that time. He was in considerable pain and his family was in considerable distress. That boy eventually had his arm set on the Monday afternoon. This is an extraordinarily distressing situation and it is bad health management. Everyone will say that a broken arm is not life threatening but it was something that required surgery to have the arm set. This boy was fasted and medicated from Thursday afternoon till Monday afternoon before he had his arm set.
At about the same time, another constituent of mine contacted me and contacted other members here in complete desperation over the plight of his mother-in-law who had broken her shoulder. The same thing happened, Mr Assistant Speaker. Here was an elderly lady who was medicated and fasted for 4½ days in hospital. She was fasted on a regular basis. She was told, “You are going to go into surgery today; therefore, you are on nil by mouth for an extended period of time.” Then she was told: “We are very sorry. You are not going to surgery today; you are going tomorrow morning.” So she would have a meal and then she would be fasted again for an extended period of time.
This went on for 4½ days before a constituent decided that he had enough of it. He approached the minister’s office, he approached my office and I know that he
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