Page 1764 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 4 June 2014
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Canberra Liberals championed the establishment of an early intervention learning program delivered by the AEIOU Foundation, designed for children with autism.
It is also no secret that those opposite threw up every obstacle possible, both before and since the election, to prevent that particular service being established to assist Canberra families. Minister Burch, I just hope it is not to your eternal shame that this situation is going to exist. There is still time to correct the issue with what should have been addressed quite some time ago. It is very difficult for parents to cope with these issues. We know of at least one family who moved to Brisbane because they wanted their child to benefit from that therapy that this government refused to allow them to have. But putting that failing aside, what was in place and is currently in place has benefits and is appreciated by parents who access the range of programs.
If you go to the current ACT education directorate website, families can see the full range of options currently on offer under early intervention programs and services. There is an early intervention playgroup designed for children aged two to three with a developmental delay or disability. The early childhood centres are for children from three years to school age with a mild to moderate developmental delay or disability. They are small classes in a mainstream setting.
The early childhood unit is for two years to school age children and is in a specialist school setting such as Malkara, Cranleigh and Turner. The early intervention unit is for three years to school age children in a small group in a preschool setting. Then there are specialist autism units and language intervention units for children with a diagnosis of ASD or with a severe delay in what is called “expressive and receptive language areas”. Again, they are in a small group in a preschool setting.
The majority of the programs I have outlined are delivered in a mainstream school setting by teachers with particular additional training in developmental and disability issues. Parents have known what is available, whether it is one or two sessions a week. They have known what preschools offer these services and the preschools have known the capabilities of the students they were enrolling the following year. They were able to plan their classes and roster their specialist teachers.
But all that is to change. In what appears to be indecent haste and when the hundreds of affected Canberra families have had no information, little time to adjust and the schools themselves also do not know where they stand, services are to stop at the end of this calendar year. That was the information that the parents were aware of.
Was it two years ago that the minister first announced with a fanfare event at the Canberra Theatre that the ACT would be one of the pilot programs for the rollout of the NDIS? Two years later, with little real thought to a sensible transition, information events and dialogue with parents, we get a short statement on the directorate website that states:
There will be no changes to early intervention programs operating in the ACT in 2014.
From 2015 early intervention services will be provided by non-government organisations.
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