Received a long email from Senator Sue Boyce – Queensland Online. Senator Boyce is one of the Senators for Queensland that we Queenslanders elect. She is LNP.
Queensland Online is a party-political online newsletter.
I thought it had some good things to say about facilities for people with a disability and their carers. Here are some extracts:
The lack of public transport …was raised as a major issue. When elderly parents can no longer drive their middle-aged children often have to stop socialising and ration medical appointments because their pension won’t cover the taxi fare.
Many parents regarded accommodation as the keystone of a future plan for their adult child yet in Queensland.. we heard of desperately long waits. A person in Toowoomba classified as Priority 1 has been waiting eight years..
Everywhere the story is that only in a crisis such as the death or serious illness of a parent is any help available. This shameful shortfall can mean that people – whose disability often means they are distressed by any change – lose their parent their home and their local community within a week or so and could then spend many months being shifted from one temporary solution such as respite care to another. Perhaps the only surprise is that only some of them develop mental health and behavioural problems.
Ramp Up is the ABC’s new website dedicated to all things disability – to ramp up the conversation about disability in Australia. It’s a place for people with disabilities to have a say.
Imagine having to lie down on the floor in your doctor’s surgery to be examined.
It’s the little things able-bodied people don’t see don’t even think about that can be the last straw on a bad day for a person with a disability. So it’s with a fanfare and roll of drums that we can announce after much lobbying by the sector that the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners (RACGP) 4th edition of the Standards for General Practices now includes a requirement for general practice surgeries to have height adjustable examination beds.
Disability Discrimination Commissioner Graeme Innes said: ‘I want to congratulate the RACGP for taking this initiative. Over the years my office has received many distressing accounts of the experiences of patients with disability and older Australians trying to use fixed height beds some having to be examined on the floor or whilst in their wheelchairs some not receiving important screening examinations at all.’
Height adjustable examination beds will assist general practice teams to reduce the risk of injury to all patients. They will also limit the risk of misdiagnosis or non-detection of serious medical conditions reduce the occupational health and safety issues for health practitioners and reduce the risks associated with legal responsibilities under discrimination law.