Page 1374 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 6 May 2015
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Mr Assistant Speaker, I bring this motion to the Assembly with mixed feelings. I have been advocating for a common-sense approach to this longstanding issue of nurses in special schools for over five years. Until late last year, 2014, it appeared that the problems were finally addressed and the right level of equitable nursing service was being delivered to children in all four special schools in the ACT: the Woden, Malkara, Cranleigh and Black Mountain schools. Families of children at these schools have been able to rely on the administration of their child’s healthcare needs by a trained registered nurse. There were signs that our education and health directorates were working well towards a sound common strategy.
The Standing Committee on Education, Training and Youth Affairs, under Chair Mary Porter MLA, with Assembly colleagues Giulia Jones MLA and Yvette Berry MLA, and I as deputy chair, made some unanimous bipartisan recommendations in our May 2013 review of the annual report of the Education and Training Directorate. Significantly, the committee has made two recommendations relating to the very issue that we are debating here today. The committee has recommended:
… that the Education and Training Directorate … improve the communications between the Education and Training Directorate and the disability related services area of ACT Health … to deliver more integrated service for special needs students in all special needs schools in the ACT …
The committee has also recommended:
… that fulltime nursing care be provided on an equal and permanent basis across all the special schools in the ACT.
That was a unanimous recommendation by the education committee.
Another committee recommendation, as it has turned out, fell on deaf ears with this government and its health and education ministers. We received news from very concerned parents that the system was being changed again—that the healthcare access at school, HAAS, program was being introduced and Black Mountain School and Woden School would no longer have nurses based in their schools. Instead, they would join a trial program with mainstream schools whereby nurses would delegate their tasks to school staff members.
Despite the protestations of parents, this trial was forced on Black Mountain and Woden schools. There was confusion. As usual, there was no consultation as to the practicality of the implementation. As late as 24 November 2014, even parents at Malkara and Cranleigh schools were being advised, in a joint communication from the ACT education and health directorates, that Malkara and Cranleigh would no longer have a nurse based at the school.
Is it any wonder that parents find it hard to believe anything that Minister Burch and Minister Corbell try to spin to them? Minister Corbell is still saying words quite contrary to the information that I have just given; he claims that there was never any intention and that Malkara and Cranleigh did not have any interruption of the nurses that were on site.
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