Page 1854 - Week 09 - Thursday, 19 October 1989
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the value of home based respite care, the recommendation that the program be extended, with the possibility of using Burrangiri as the co-ordinator, is considered important by the committee.
Transport for the elderly also appears to be an area that needs to be urgently addressed. The current waiting list for the taxi service is totally unacceptable for the aged. However, I also believe that 75 vouchers over five weeks for each elderly person could be cut down initially to allow more to have access to the scheme, given our times of economic restraint and while additional funding is being put in place.
The recommendation of a small pool of minibuses for group activity is, I believe, an innovative one, but should not be restricted to nursing homes and hostels. Individual groups, such as aged pensioner groups and stroke clubs, should have access on a very small fee system. Transport for those in institutions should not be left to those facilities which are able to raise additional funds for purchasing such vehicles.
The affordability gap is, I believe, well addressed in this report and the detailed area is addressed under both hostels and nursing homes. The recommendation that the ACT Government implement the Kearney report recommendation to build a new nursing home and fund this through the eventual sale of the Jindalee Nursing Home site is one that I commend. Those in this Assembly who are not familiar with Jindalee - and I hope there are none - should immediately take a trip out to the nursing home and see how totally inadequate the facility really is. The staff, and especially the director of nursing, are to be commended on the excellent job they do, but let us not lose sight of the location and the outdated layout which makes their task significantly harder.
While a further 40 nursing home beds will be available in 1990, the recent announcement by the New South Wales Government of the closure of 20 beds at the George Forbes Nursing Home in Queanbeyan has immediately eradicated half the increase. This information was not known to the committee until quite late in its inquiry but has highlighted how quickly things can change.
One of my concerns is the sometimes inappropriate reaction to aged persons units in our community. The majority of the aged, and rightly so, do not want to leave their area of residency, sometimes of many years' standing. However, many in our community react badly to the building of aged persons units. They become part of the "not in my back yard" thinking. This is very disappointing. Aged persons units must be built close to facilities and in inner Canberra where the majority of the elderly now reside in their own homes.
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