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House of Assembly - Fifty-Second Parliament, First Session (52-1)
2010-07-22 Daily Xml
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INFANT MORTALITY

Mr PICCOLO (Light) (15:29): Today, I wish to raise a matter which is one of great emotion and pain and trauma for couples. I would like to talk about those couples who have lost a baby through stillbirth or neonatal death. This is obviously a very tough time for couples. In particular, it is a very traumatic time for women, and I know a number of women who have had a stillbirth or neonatal death and have taken quite a bit of time to deal with the grief.

Until recent times, the pain from the loss has been compounded by the fact that the baby has no legal recognition and, in many cases, no place for the parents to mourn. It is not so long ago that stillborn or other neonatal death babies were disposed of through the hospital system or placed in a coffin alongside an aged person who may have died in their care. The grieving process has been particularly difficult for women who in the past have not had an opportunity to mourn the loss of their baby.

The reality was made very clear to me by a former resident of my electorate, the late Mrs Del Cooper, who approached me, when I was running for mayor, for the establishment of a memorial for stillborn babies and neonatal death babies in the local cemetery operated by the council. The reality was that, despite her losing her baby in 1946, it was obvious she still felt the pain after all those years that had gone by because there was no memorial for her child.

In February 2009, a submission was received from a local resident, Mrs Ali Chapman, a member of SANDS (Stillbirth and Neonatal Death Support group), requesting that the local council consider options for the Willaston Babies Memorial to be inclusive of past, present and future community needs and to allow memorials for babies lost after 1986. The original memorial built there was in response to the action undertaken by Mrs Del Cooper and her lobbying, and I am pleased to say that the original memorial was built before Mrs Del Cooper passed away.

The current memorial is for the 190 babies that were buried at the Willaston cemetery between 1877 and 1986 without recognition or ceremony. As I mentioned, Mrs Cooper lost her own son, Leonard, and he was buried with some sort of tribute under the Mulga tree in the cemetery in 1946. The local SANDS committee, comprising councillors Patricia Dent, Lillian Bartlett, Penny Johnston, Warren Dibben, local resident and funeral director Ms Giselle Forgie, Ms Ali Chapman and Ms Julie Marshall have been raising funds to build a new memorial in the local cemetery. Moneys have been raised by the SANDS members—in fact, they have raised in the vicinity of $20,000 in this year—to build this new memorial.

The council was happy to have the memorial built in the local cemetery but did not have the funds, so this group has raised funds. The project can now go ahead. The money was raised through committee pledges and the recent Precious Souls Dinner held in Gawler, which I attended with the Hon. John Dawkins. There have been a number of people involved in this project. Now that the funds are available, a team of officers from the council, including Gary Kerr and Grant Hemmerling, will work with some landscape architects under the direction of Ms Heather Barclay, who is the manager of asset services at the council, and we hope to have the new memorial open in late September or early October.

Also, the money raised will assist with the maintenance of the memorial. Architect Hillary Hamnett and Martin Corbin have been engaged to help with the design to ensure that the new memorial also complements the original one and also pays a fitting tribute to those people who have lost a child through stillbirth or neonatal death. This project is of importance for two reasons: first, it demonstrates what communities working together can achieve; and, secondly, it pays tribute to particularly those women who have lost their child through stillbirth or neonatal death.

Time expired.

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