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House of Assembly - Fifty-First Parliament, Third Session (51-3)
2009-02-17 Daily Xml
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DISABILITY SERVICES

Mrs PENFOLD (Flinders) (17:23): I spoke again this morning to the father of a disabled son, who had sent me an email more than two weeks ago that I am about to put on the record. He has heard nothing from the Minister for Disability or the Minister for Education, despite them receiving copies of this email requesting urgent action immediately after I received it, and despite numerous follow-up phone calls and emails sent.

The most recent email, marked 'Urgent', was sent on Friday to the Minister for Disability. It stated:

Jennifer, the following letter was emailed to your chief of staff on 2 February for urgent action. To date this family have heard nothing. Every day their disabled son sits at home—he is rapidly losing any motivation that he gained from attending school. Every day the same taxi that he caught for several years to school drives past his gate with other students aboard. It drives past Compass Services—his moving on facility.

This situation is ludicrous. Surely some liaison between Disability Services and the education department can resolve this problem. I seek your urgent intervention.

His letter states:

The Education Department Logical Wisdom. Painting the Picture. I have a son who is autistic, now 20. For the past eight years he has been attending the special school in Port Lincoln. We live 65 kilometres from that school. Every school day that he has attended he has been picked up by a taxi bus with multiple other special needs people. The rules of the taxi as far as the way the taxi bus is contracted by the education department are: the trip is charged at roughly $130 per trip each way, a total of $260 approximately per day.

If there is one person on the bus or 10 persons on the bus the rate is the same. Because the bus is chartered by the education department they, the education department, will not allow Rodney to travel on the bus to go to what is called Compass, part of the Bedford Industries section for disabled people, in a program by the education department called Moving On. The taxi bus will still be coming up past us to pick up other disabled people for the special needs school in Port Lincoln and goes right past the Compass facilities before it gets to the special needs school.

If Rodney is to continue his Moving On program with the education department we have to personally drive him 220 kilometres round trip each day to a point where Compass (Bedford Industries) has agreed to pick him up and drop him off each day. The education department in their wisdom awarded Rodney $2,000 towards travelling expenses that we the parents cannot personally claim. It must be paid to an independent body such as the taxi bus.

So, if a separate taxi is provided for Rodney and costs approximately $260 per day Rodney will be able to attend his Moving On program for 7.5 days of the year. Rodney's program should be renamed Moving On To Nowhere. I would be interested in your opinion, please. The person I believe who said Rodney cannot use the...bus was—

and the departmental person's name was used. It continues:

The same bus he has been on the whole time he has attended the special school. While a lot of other kids have started their school year, Rodney has yet to start. Could this be discrimination? Yours...

Signed by Rodney's father. Once again, government rules and regulations impact unfairly on country people. There is no public transport such as metropolitan residents can use and which is supported by taxpayers. If it is a matter of insurance then surely the $2,000 would be sufficient to cover the necessary insurance.

Rules and regulations are essential for any community; however, one of the options that the minister has is to apply some flexibility so that rules and regulations do not descend into a farce, such as that which has happened in this instance. Rodney has not started his work education year and is idly hanging around at home, a situation that has no positives but a number of negatives for him and his well-being and that of his family. I urge the ministers to look again at this instance and display common sense to resolve the issue as quickly as possible.

In the short time I have left I draw members' attention to the fact that parents and carers of autistic children and adults are unable to obtain disabled parking permits. In South Australia the requirement for a disabled parking permit is:

...persons with a temporary or permanent physical disability whose speed of movement is severely restricted by the impairment and whose ability to use public transport is significantly impeded by the impairment.

Time expired.

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