Page 2866 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 14 August 2019
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of hydrotherapy services for health maintenance purposes to assess the best alternatives for the individual; and the ACT Health Directorate conduct a study of the cost and benefits and different models for the longer term establishment of a hydrotherapy facility in the south of Canberra.
It also highlights some of the factors contributing to the uncertainty in the community about transitioning to alternative options. These include: different user groups having different needs in accessing hydrotherapy facilities but no quantification of the needs of different subgroups; an increase in registrations for hydrotherapy and attendance at hydrotherapy sessions run by Arthritis ACT, requiring a greater number of sessions needing to be made available; and the hydrotherapy pool at THC approaching its end of life, attendant risk issues surrounding the THC pool and other aspects of supervised hydrotherapy under the Arthritis ACT contract.
The Nous report and the minister’s comments this week have provided some detail about the ongoing safety and maintenance concerns about the Canberra Hospital pool. The safety of pool users, and of course staff, is paramount. We have to accept the position outlined by Minister Stephen-Smith that keeping the pool open in the long term is not safe and viable. Even if the pool had not needed significant maintenance works recently and even if the risk to individual workers had been mitigated to a point, it is clear it is an ageing facility, and when a major issue occurs it may not be possible, in fact, to fix it in any timely fashion. At the very least, that is one of the ongoing risks which I know that everybody is aware of and, I believe, appreciates. Given this, the pool simply cannot be kept open forever.
We have to think of what the alternatives are going forward. It would seem that, from the Nous report and the ongoing debate here and in the community—as I said in my earlier remarks—there is definitely a need for further work to be done to meet recommendation 1 of the Nous report on engagement. It is clear that stakeholders need more engagement in depth to understand the safety and infrastructure concerns and to plan for the future of these services.
If nothing else, the debates in this place have prompted recognition from the government that decisions to close the Canberra Hospital pool could have been more consultative and the community has often felt that it was not heard. I accept that the directorate and the minister have taken some steps in this regard—with the briefing held earlier this month. I regret that, due to committee obligations, I was not able to attend that, and I thank the minister for her invitation. However, despite this briefing and the minister’s wishes, it seems that not all users are on the same page and that additional and ongoing stakeholder engagement is required.
Closing the pool without making it clear to users what alternative accessible options are available is clearly deeply distressing to the impacted community. The recommendation by Nous that the ACT Health Directorate and CHS “collect enough data on the users of hydrotherapy services to assess the best alternatives for the individual” and the commitment by the health minister to work with the stakeholders to make arrangements to meet the ongoing needs of pool users will take time and, I fear, is unlikely to completely satisfy some stakeholders. However, it seems, given where we are, a reasonable part of the way forward from here.
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