Page 1772 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 4 June 2014
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the time—and he would be my age now—where we would walk down the path of Bruce Hostel because he had never, ever lived in the community. I remember discussions I had with family and friends of those individuals who were beside themselves about the changes that were underway.
There are many similarities to the anxiety and apprehension that parents are having now over the first transition stage for young children to move into the new scheme. I understand the concern of parents. It is a change, and any change, when you are a parent of a person with a disability, is exacerbated and tenfold to what parents who have children without a disability experience. But that does not mean that we cannot manage that change and that we cannot support those families.
We have been very keen to get information out as soon as possible. I know in the last couple of months we have been pressing for the implementation and transition plan to be approved by the commonwealth. That has been approved today, as I understand it, thankfully before the Prime Minister went on his trip overseas. We are now in a position to talk in very concrete ways with families and with the providers that have already shown interest in coming into the ACT to support families.
The reason that we have started with children under the age of five, essentially, or young children, is that from 1 July anyone born here in the ACT with a disability which is eligible for the national disability insurance scheme will go straight into the scheme. When we looked at how we transition to the full scheme rollout in the ACT—and we are the only jurisdiction doing this, largely because of our size—to 5,000 people, ultimately, we had to look how to transition in a very careful and orderly way. So it is no surprise that we looked at the youngest group and the smallest group to start that transition. The babies that are born from 1 July will move into the scheme. We then look at the next youngest population, children under two or two to four-year-olds not starting school until 2015. That is a reasonably small group relative to the larger group that will come as we progress through the age groups.
That allows us to work pretty much individually with those families. There has been an incredible amount of work done with families. I just cannot accept some of the criticism that has been put to the government today by the opposition. There has been a task force established. Community forums were undertaken. There was information on websites. The Community Services Directorates really did go as hard as they can to get information out to people in the best time available. There have been various meetings. I have seen the reports of the meetings, the discussions, that have been held.
I ran into a mum on the weekend whose child I looked after probably 20 years ago now—maybe a bit more than that—a child with a very severe disability, probably the most severe disability that I ever worked with. I was talking with her about how her child was going, her now young woman, and how she felt about transitioning into the national disability insurance scheme. She acknowledged that it meant change and that was a challenge, but she thought that ultimately it would be good for the sector as a whole.
There is more money going in. There are more resources being brought to the city. There will be jobs created here. There will be jobs for young people. When we look at areas of growth in the economy, the disability sector is going to be one of them. Aged
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