Page 1806 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 7 June 2006
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What I would like to see is a statement from the government on how some of this money will be spent and what they will do. They mention that it will be used for people with disabilities living in residential aged care facilities to be supported in accommodation that meets their individual support needs in a way that is age appropriate. How will that be done? Will it be in the way of a service where they are taken out of the aged care facility? Will we have youth officers who will go into the aged care facilities and address needs on site? Will it involve a different model?
We have some money, and the money is welcome, but we need to make sure that it is spent appropriately to ensure that, one, they get the maximum effect personally and we as a community get the maximum effect from the funding. We need to work on an alternative for young people with disabilities, to exclude nursing homes as residential options, to ensure that they are no longer left to languish in facilities designed for aged people. I do not see any move towards that either. The option will still be in the ACT that, if you need a bed, that bed will be in a nursing home.
Nursing homes were never meant to handle these young people. It is a problem that has been with us for some time, but what are we going to do about it in the future? Nursing homes do not have the resources, they do not have the level of staffing, nor are staff trained to support the different disability types that these young people have to endure.
Recently a report published in the West Australian said that a survey in the ACT showed that a significant percentage of carers are not actually trained at all. Are these young people inappropriately in nursing homes, being looked after by people who are either inappropriately trained for their needs or not trained for their needs at all? So we have a problem that compounds and compounds. I believe that alternative models of community living need to be formulated and funded that will provide these young people with the opportunity to participate as members of their community, so that they are no longer excluded from the community and indeed socially isolated.
Going back to the statistics that Ms MacDonald quoted about how the atmosphere of a nursing home is not conducive to your friends coming around, let us face it: we all know that we are all very busy and it must become harder and harder to go and visit a mate or a friend in a nursing home. If that place is not conducive to being friendly for an able-bodied person to visit, then how much worse must it be for a young person? I think what the ACT government must do now is act to ensure that young disabled Canberrans do not have to be looked after in nursing homes at all.
No-one denies that aged care facilities do their very best for younger people with disabilities, but we also cannot deny that they are not the very best places for young people to live in. So it will be interesting to see if Ms MacDonald has some more details from the minister when she concludes this debate. Let us be quite open about this: will the government now consider opening more group homes, similar to disability group homes, to cater specifically for young people in aged care?
If we can gather them together, we can have a greater scale of economy, we can provide better services, we can provide dedicated services and we can provide appropriate services in the situation where they live. Hopefully we can make it a more interesting and young people friendly place so that their friends will continue to come and travel
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