Page 4003 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 20 September 2017
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the evidence for those for whom residential rehab is indicated. It also outlined the exclusions for treatment, to ensure that the best possible implementation and outcomes were achieved for all.
These exclusions included opioid maintenance therapy clients and clients whose behaviour presented an unacceptable management or safety risk within the bush healing farm context. Winnunga always had the best interests of their community uppermost in mind which is, of course, based on their extensive experience and expertise and long history of working with their community. But all of this is a moot point. We now have a facility that is not a drug and alcohol treatment facility, though we do not know yet know what it is. What we do know is that the services to be provided there, although they may include Indigenous workers, do not currently include Indigenous organisations. Yet again, no local Indigenous people have been contracted directly to provide services to the Indigenous clients at the farm. Instead the government is running programs from the CIT, ACT Parks and Conservation, ACT Health and Nutrition Australia ACT. No doubt they are all worthwhile organisations but they fail the Indigenous test. They are not listed with ORIC and are not a Supply Nation member organisation.
Let us recap. We have a facility that is not a drug and alcohol rehabilitation centre, that is not residential, that has cost the government upwards of $12 million, that does not have a service delivery model which is only suitable for the final stages in the treatment of drug and alcohol dependency recovery, and which has failed to include any Indigenous organisations. You may ask, “Having the Ngunnawal Bush Healing Farm, is there still a need for anything further?” The answer is a very loud and clear yes: yes from the former Chief Minister, Jon Stanhope, who stated very clearly that this was always intended and the needs of the community demanded it; yes from the CEO of Winnunga, who stated in her newsletter, “The need for an Indigenous drug and alcohol residential rehabilitation facility is nevertheless even greater now than it was in 2007”; and yes from Ross Fowler and Jo Chivers, ACT Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Elected Body former chairman and deputy chairperson, who requested that the ACT government outline what it intended to do to provide an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander drug and alcohol residential rehabilitation service in the ACT. He said, “What we want from the government on behalf of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community is a commitment to a residential drug and alcohol rehabilitation facility that provides the clinical services our community so desperately needs.”
Why do you need such a service? Why is the need so great? There are currently only 105 residential drug and alcohol rehabilitation beds in Canberra, through Karralika Programs, Directions ACT, the Ted Noffs Foundation and the Salvation Army. None of these provides Indigenous specific or appropriate care and all of them are oversubscribed. The result has been that many patients, including Indigenous patients, have to travel interstate to seek care and support, away from their families, away from their community, away from their lands. For example, those wishing to seek Indigenous-specific treatment must travel to somewhere like Nowra, a six-hour return journey if family wish to visit. Ross Fowler stated, “This is not working.”
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