Page 3488 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 22 October 2014
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I think it is very disappointing that he is actually causing distress to families by saying services will end.
Through you, Madam Assistant Speaker, I say this to the minister: if a loaded, misinformed commentary is the only way of getting answers out of you and your directorate on what services will be available and where the transition is headed, I will continue to do so. To accuse me of saying that no services will be available next year is simply putting words in my mouth. Point to where I have said that there will be no services next year. Continually, it has been a call that we needed clarity of what services—
Ms Burch: Government services will end.
MR WALL: Government services will end. Correct. The minister is correct: government services will end at the end of this year. They have failed, though, to provide an alternative as to what other service providers will be here in 2015 to bridge the gap.
The government has taken a decision to cut and run from early intervention services. We are now partway through term 4; we have about six or seven weeks until the end of this term. Parents need to now start considering what their options will be next year. They are running out of time. These children have special needs. These children often need to be aware of the surroundings they are in, with familiar locations. They need to have relationships or trust with the teachers or service providers they are going to be working with. To give parents limited time to assess what these options are going to be next year is simply causing unnecessary distress.
We all talk about the NDIS as an opportunity to give people with a disability and their carers opportunity and choice. I have called for this information to have been made earlier. These are calls that I have been making since as early as June this year. This information needs to be provided. Parents that rely on this certainty and rely on making sure that they are making the right choices on behalf of their children need the time to consider what their choices are. Not outlining who the service providers will be next year until, as it may be, 17 November provides parents and carers with very limited opportunity to consider what choice they will want to make for 2015.
It is a decision that we do still support; we are supportive of the government in getting out of this space. Like Liberal Party philosophy, if there is someone willing to do the role that government is currently providing, the non-government sector should be given every encouragement and every opportunity to do it. The manner in which this transition is being handled is where the issue arises.
If in June, when these calls were first being made by me and my opposition colleagues, there was a clear plan of what the transition was going to be, with a time line, details of who other service providers might potentially be, what services they would be looking to offer and the capacities that they might be able to enrol in in 2015, parents would have been given ample opportunity to assess what their options were. Instead we are leaving it until the end of this school year to inform parents of what
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