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Legislative Council - Fifty-Second Parliament, Second Session (52-2)
2013-07-03 Daily Xml
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STRATHMONT CENTRE LIBRARY

The Hon. K.L. VINCENT (15:51): A fortnight ago in this place, I asked questions of the Minister for Disabilities in another place regarding the Department for Communities and Social Inclusion's Strathmont library, a specialist library for the disability sector and the only government library of its type in this country. To date, I still have not had an answer, of course, to the questions I have asked the minister, and I would like to put on the record some of the responses and concerns that have been expressed to me in my office since I asked those questions. I have been contacted by people with disabilities, their families, health professionals and others in the disability sector, including workers, who are angry and disappointed by this decision.

I would like to know what has been the process of this decision. As I understand it, staff first heard that this was a fait accompli in a DCSI update emailed by Peter Bull, executive director for community engagement, on Thursday 6 June. However, I am told by those in the know that it had been planned for some months. It seems that no consultation at all has occurred with staff, clients or unions. In the two weeks since, many staff within disability services have voiced concerns with their colleagues, to managers, and directly to the officer who is in charge of managing the closure.

My understanding is that the two specialist librarians and library assistant have been offered redundancy packages and that no more book purchases are to occur. From 15 July, there will be no more book interlibrary loans; from 31 July, no more loans at all from the collection; and from the end of August there will be no more article interlibrary loans. All staff are to be gone or redeployed by the end of September, and the closure and the collections moved to another site will be effected by the end of October.

It is very important to understand that what is being closed is not just a library. What is being closed is formally known as the 'library and information service'—library and information. It is the latter part of this title that conveys the most significant issues involved. Peter Bull's update made no mention at all of: (1) ongoing funding for maintenance and development of the collection; (2) ongoing funding for article acquisition fees for anyone wanting to obtain published articles via the library in its new location; and (3) the many services that the library provides, other than its shelf collection.

These services include cataloguing and managing loans of professional assessments and resources within the disability system, provision of interlibrary loans, provision of the article acquisition mentioned above, maintenance of electronic and file-based article subject catalogues, expert searches of Medline and similar industry databases, and so on.

What are the implications? First, Peter Bull's contention that moving the library to a community location will improve public access seems pretty shaky. While its location at some central point, such as the Barr Smith Library, may make some sense from an access point of view, I actually think that physical location is of minor importance. Strathmont Centre is closing, so no doubt finding some other location would have been necessary eventually. The real issue in the 'relocation' is the withdrawal of commitment to the library's ongoing maintenance, through updating the collection, and the continuation of personal services carried out by its staff. The relocation is a stalking horse in achieving these further outcomes.

It also seems that the closure will have significant implications for the professional work within disability services. The organisation's professional staff—many occupational therapists, psychologists, social workers, speech pathologists and developmental educators, but also nurses, dietitians, medical officers, physios and music therapists, among others—are relatively small in number and spread thinly across the metropolitan and regional areas. They have enormous but important workloads and have to contend with the highly complex situations and characteristics of a community experiencing the most complex and disabling situations and conditions.

Disability services has traditionally functioned as the service of last resort to whom the community turns when other services can no longer assist or run out of expertise. Frequently, staff and clients have to contend, together, with a range of physical, health, psychological, behavioural, developmental and social issues with little or no organisational support. It is very clear that this library is more than a shelf collection for people in the community and, with the advent of DisabilityCare or the national disability insurance scheme, this is not a service that we in the community can afford to lose.

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