Kelly Vincent – 5AA Interview on the Centre for Disability Health (update on proposed closure)
15/11/2015
On 15th November 2015, Dignity for Disability MLC Kelly Vincent was interviewed on radio station 5RPH to discuss the proposed closure of the Centre for Disability Health and what progress has been made in Dignity for Disability’s fight to keep the Centre open. Here is the transcript from the interview.
Andrew Reimer: Dignity for Disability MLC, Kelly Vincent, you want to talk about the Centre for Disability Health up at Modbury Hospital?
Kelly Vincent: Yes this is something we spoke about last week, Andrew, a very important ongoing issue. The Government is looking to close the Centre for Disability Health which is part of the Modbury Hospital which caters to patients who because of their disability find it very hard to be responded to in the medical profession. They could be people who don’t communicate through speaking or sign language, so their only way of communicating that they have a health issue, that they’re feeling sick or they’re in pain is by exhibiting behaviour that can sometimes be interpreted as challenging, aggressive or violent. If you or I had a migraine for a week and we weren’t able to tell someone we’d get pretty fed up too and probably start exhibiting some challenging behaviours as well. The Centre for Disability Health has a team of specially trained nurses and doctors, psychiatrists and psychologists as well, who are trained in responding to the needs of people who find it difficult to communicate quickly, and can also have longer appointments so that they can slowly go through every issue, communicate with the person and scan the person to find the underlying cause of the challenge in the behaviour which is really important because often without this expertise all that will happen is the person will go to a general practitioner and get a sedative medication to calm them down and stop the aggressive, frustrated behaviour rather than treating the underlying cause. That means a person could go undiagnosed with a reflux issue, anxiety, depression or even cancer for weeks or maybe even months and we wouldn’t notice. The medical profession tends to assume that when a person has a disability every behaviour that they exhibit or every need that they have relates directly to disability rather than it being an underlying health issue.
It’s really important that we keep the Centre for Disability Health open at Modbury Hospital, it’s had over 1,000 new patients in the last 18 months for mental health reasons alone let alone the other stuff that they provide. That goes to show the need. Now the Government is looking to close the centre because the NDIS is coming. The current consumers of the Centre for Disability Health have received a letter that basically says ‘The National Disability Insurance Scheme is coming, this will change the way that disability services are provided including the Centre for Disability Health.’ What’s interesting and concerning about this if you talk to the people running the National Disability Insurance Scheme it does tell you quite clearly that they don’t see it as being their role to fund healthcare. It’s quite frustrating that again there’s this view that just because you have a disability you don’t have the right to access health services as well. We’re very concerned in Dignity for Disability that if we lose the service we’ll go back to seeing many people with disabilities continue to be chemically sedated for aggressive and concerning behaviour rather than having the reason for that behaviour addressed and recognised and therefore costing the health system more down the track because if they have an undiagnosed issue like a reflux issue or cancer that can become very expensive and very complicated down the track if it does go undiagnosed in the long run. If this is about cost saving I think that’s a false notion because this will result in more cost in the future when people need more crisis care for when concerns get worse because they’ve gone undiagnosed for so long or even palliative care for something like cancer going undiagnosed for too long. So on behalf of Dignity for Disability I have started a petition petitioning both the Health Minister and the Minister for Disabilities to keep this centre open. In the four days that the petition has been running on the website change.org it’s received almost 100 signatures per day which is quite an incredible effort but clearly demonstrates the need for this service. It’s been very pleasing today as well to see the Royal College of Psychiatrists join us in the call to keep the centre open with the nearly 400 signatures that the petition has, with the media that we have so far and with the College of Psychiatrists now joining us in this fight, there’s a clear need to keep this centre open. So I certainly encourage all your listeners to go and sign the petition, learn more about the issue, and spread the word to keep this vital service open.
Andrew Reimer: The Centre for Disability Health, say the Government does close it down, where will the patients go and what’s going to happen to those health care professionals?
Kelly Vincent: In terms of where the current patients of the Centre for Disability Health go I think that’s exactly the question that’s on everybody’s lips. Everybody that’s been talking to me about this issue, calling my office and talking to the media and signing this petition, that is the question that we’re all asking, where will these patients go? Because even though of course there should be more ability in mainstream health services to respond to the needs of people with disabilities as citizens of this state the fact of the matter is at the moment they simply don’t have the level of training and the resources necessary. We all know that GP appointments are often very short and very rushed and it can be hard enough for people like you and me to go through everything that we might want to go through in a regular length GP appointment let alone someone who might need to communicate very slowly and in ways that General Practitioners are not necessarily used to seeing or used to responding to. So we’re very concerned that there is a view that the National Disability Insurance Scheme will take over these clients when the agency responsible for running the scheme is very clear on the fact that they’re not wanting to fund or looking to fund anything other than very strictly-disability related needs if you like. So that excludes quite clearly things like education and health care. So it’s very concerning that on the state level we hear this, don’t worry the NDIS will take care of this, and yet the NDIS is telling us that they don’t see this as their responsibility.
Andrew Reimer: The jobs of the doctors, nurses, psychiatrists, where are those practitioners going to go?
Kelly Vincent: I think that’s part of the question and certainly I’d love to know the answer. There is a hope that perhaps they could get work in the mainstream health care service and perhaps use some of the knowledge that they gained from working at the Centre for Disability Health, to influence people in regular mainstream health care services. But given that there is not enough of this training, there isn’t the time in a regular length GP appointment to go through these issues and there’s the assumption that every need a person has relates to their disability rather than it being a health issue. But that training out in the mainstream, even if it does reach the mainstream, will only be a drop in the ocean so we really need to keep the centre open, to keep this expertise but also to keep training more and more GPs and psychologists and psychiatrists and nurses on how to respond to people with disabilities who have these very complex needs. It may well be that we can afford to shut the centre down in future when there is enough training and resourcing in this area in the mainstream but that is flatly not the case at the moment.
Andrew Reimer: The Health Minister Jack Snelling, what have you been hearing from him?
Kelly Vincent: I understand that a request for a meeting with him has gone through from me from my office, we’re yet to hear back. It is actually the Department for Social Inclusion and Communities that fund the Centre for Disability Health so actually it falls under the portfolio of Minister Tony Piccolo but interestingly in the media in the last couple of days Minister Piccolo has said this is a health issue and Minister Snelling has said this is a disability issue, so yet again we see Ministers passing the buck and not wanting to treat people with disabilities as residents and tax payers of their state, as people who need holistic health care and support and who shouldn’t be shunned just because they don’t fit neatly into a box that Ministers have invented for them.
Andrew Reimer: When you finally have a meeting with either Minister and you get some assurances about what is or isn’t going to happen can you let us know? When you take into consideration that one in five Australians identify as having a disability, I think from what I’m reading of this whole situation the State Government have got it very, very wrong and they’re under-estimating the impact it’s going to have on the community.
Kelly Vincent: Very much so and it’s not just the one in five people with disabilities who might be using this service and other services, the centre has had over 1,000 new patients in the last year and a half, it’s also their families who will struggle to properly holistically support the people with disabilities that they’re caring for and supporting without the expertise available at places like the Centre for Disability Health. I spoke to one mother who said that her daughter would not even have been diagnosed properly with her disability without the expertise at the Centre for Disability Health without the ability to slowly go through things, holistically look at things and all of us have the right to holistic health care. If people without disabilities can expect to go to a GP appointment and go through every issue that might be concerning to them and not just be given pills to calm them down and say come back when you’ve calmed down a bit then we certainly shouldn’t be putting that onto people with disabilities so I’m more than happy to keep you informed. In the meantime make sure you sign the petition, put a call in to the Minister’s officer, call my office if you need any more information and I’ll definitely keep you informed when we’re due to get a meeting and learn more.
Andrew Reimer: Have a good week. It’s change.org to find the petition that Kelly’s talking about.
