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Legislative Council - Fifty-Third Parliament, Second Session (53-2)
2016-02-23 Daily Xml
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Centre for Disability Health

The Hon. K.L. VINCENT (15:25): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before asking the minister representing the Minister for Health questions concerning the future of the Centre for Disability Health at Modbury.

Leave granted.

The Hon. K.L. VINCENT: The Centre for Disability Health is operated as a specialised service for people with disability, particularly those who are registered with disability services (i.e. Disability SA). Since last year, the community has been placed on notice that the Centre for Disability Health will be closed, with the likely end date, as I understand it, being mooted as the end of this year, although that seems to depend on whom you ask. People who were eligible for disability services but not actually registered with Disability SA were also accepted as clients of the CDH. With the rollout of the NDIS, children with disability aged under 14 are no longer eligible for disability services. My questions to the minister are:

1. Is it true that only clients who are registered with Disability SA will be eligible to consult the Centre for Disability Health henceforth?

2. Will the existing clients who are not registered with Disability SA be required to be discharged from the service?

3. Will the existing clients be advised of the change in policy and, if so, how will they be advised?

4. What additional resources will be put into facilities like CAMHS to absorb the increase in clientele who have no other appropriate services available to them?

5. What is the current waiting list for new CAMHS clients?

6. What planning has been done to cater to the health needs of young people in particular with challenging behaviours who are no longer eligible or who may no longer be eligible to visit the Centre for Disability Health?

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER (Minister for Sustainability, Environment and Conservation, Minister for Water and the River Murray, Minister for Climate Change) (15:27): I thank the honourable member for her most important questions around the Centre for Disability Health at the Modbury Hospital. I'm not completely sure whether it is actually in the purview of the Minister for Health or the Minister for Disabilities (Hon. Leesa Vlahos) in the other place, but I will undertake to ascertain which minister it applies to and to take the honourable member's questions about who actually gets access to that centre and whether they are registered with SA Health or not, whether they will have access to that centre into the future.

Of course, there are implications in terms of how the NDIS is rolled out, particularly for those in the younger age group. It may well be—and I am not saying it is—that it's just a natural product of transferring people between the health system and the National Disability Insurance Scheme system, which will be coming about in the very near future. That scheme, you will remember, was a scheme that was championed by the federal Labor government to address the severe underfunding for disability services right across the country. It was a Labor government that introduced it, it was a Labor government that implemented it, and the Labor government fought for it very, very hard.

This state Labor government—and I am not going to try to take too much kudos for myself but I was the minister for disabilities at the time—was instrumental in making sure that that system was applied across the nation with some degree of equity. It was always our concern that particularly young children should not fall through the gaps when this was being rolled out, and that was why we as a state volunteered to do our initial work in the National Disability Insurance Scheme in the area of young people, and we did that in a staged way, because the other trial areas around the country weren't really focusing on young people in particular. It is a focus for us, it will always be a focus. As I say, I am not quite sure which minister will be responding to this but I undertake to check with both of them and bring back a response for the honourable member.

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