Page 1754 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 4 June 2014
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How many regional students have had access to these facilities over the years—this will now no longer happen as children in NSW, even if they are in the ACT school system, will not have access to the NDIS for a number of years.
What is the point of having parent focus groups after the decision to close a service?
Has the department spoken to specialist teachers to find out what sort of behaviours, self care, sensory needs, safety issues, building modifications, the need for consistency, familiar staff etc that these new providers are going to have to provide and whether they are even happy to take some of these high needs on?
Another question is:
Have they spoken to the preschools and day care centres about the above issues to ensure that:
They are aware of the high needs children that are going to start flowing through their enrolment process
They will be required to do things they had not previously done or provided support and infrastructure for.
The need for transition—for both the child, parent and staff—which can be a lengthy process, especially if specialised equipment or modifications need to be done before the start of the school year.
Are these services going to be able to provide 4-6 hours a day, 2-3 times a week (which is what is offered at the current EI units through the Department) and at what cost to the NDIS or parent?
What about the children who have no official diagnosis yet but would benefit from these types of services—how are they going to afford these?
How are these private centres going to liaise with the schools for transition from ‘preschool’ environment to school environment.
The Early Intervention preschool groups (3 and 4 year old) did cost the government, however, were extremely low cost (voluntary fees) for parents. There is nothing like this system in Australia.
Some of these facilities are shared, how is that going to be managed
Some are on school premises (eg Turner School), how is this going to be managed, will they have access to school facilities, playgrounds etc, who will have responsibility for maintenance etc who will do the upgrades to ensure they are suitable (fencing, resources, electronic equipment, computers etc)
There is word out that therapists in Therapy ACT have been told to start looking for jobs from December 2014 even though Therapy ACT state they will continue to operate until end of 2016.
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