Page 224 - Week 01 - Thursday, 11 February 2016
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responsibilities in this area and any gaps or duplicate roles in responsibilities that exist so that we can be very clear about where our areas of responsibility lie. We will also be looking at the ACT’s specific situation, if there are any specifics to the way that people live in the ACT or the services that they have access to that make them specifically vulnerable or stronger than elsewhere. We will also be looking at ACT government-funded services.
As I stressed in the debate, hopefully the health committee will pay particular attention to how our emergency departments deal with the most severe cases that turn up on their doorsteps. As I say, I was quite disturbed to witness the experience late last year of a mum deciding whether she could any longer survive staying at the emergency room with her daughter who was threatening to harm herself. The nurse was asking her, “If you leave, do you think she will be safe?” The mother said, “No, I don’t, but I just can’t cope anymore with standing and sitting around here,” when it had been over 20 hours. We do not know if people in emergency departments have money for food and those sorts of things and what else is going on in their lives as they sit there and wait. They may have other children or other people in their homes that need care as well. I would really love it if the committee could pay some attention to that issue which I have personally witnessed in recent times.
We know that in the private health realm in the ACT there is a wait time of about six weeks to see a psychologist. That is after the point that someone comes to terms with the idea of seeing a psychologist. We know that there are still many parents and carers who are afraid of the idea of young people going to a psychologist. They are worried about the intensity of that or whether it really will help. As somebody who has had a couple of my kids at the psychologist’s from time to time, I can say that these people really are experts who deal on a daily basis with the kinds of things that your kids are going through and they really do know the parameters of normal recovery.
It being 45 minutes after the commencement of Assembly business, the debate was interrupted in accordance with standing order 77. Ordered that the time allotted to Assembly business be extended by 30 minutes.
MRS JONES: My advice to the Assembly and to the broader community is that we must learn to be less afraid of psychologists. That might seem like a strange statement to make, but I know from my own experience that we have all had to learn that these are professionals who also perhaps have been stigmatised in the past by conversations in our community. But they deal on a daily basis with issues of mental health and normal recovery: what recovery looks like and what treatment looks like. In the meantime, while our community catches up with information that we are not all across, we should open up and talk about the fact that professionals like this are very important to the wellbeing of our children. I thank the Assembly for its support in this debate. I hope that the outcomes of the committee’s report are really robust and give us a way forward.
Motion, as amended, agreed to.
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