Send a letter to government: help improve health services
Dear Members and Friends of DDWA,
Recently Dr Julian Trollor, Director of the National Centre of Excellence in Intellectual Disability Health National Center of Excellence in Intellectual Disability Health | About (unsw.edu.au), visited WA and met with community members, advocates and leaders within the Departments of Health, Mental Health and Community Services.
Julian provided a very compelling overview of the poor state of health services for people with intellectual disability across Australia. We were encouraged by the interest shown by health leaders around the issues facing people with intellectual disability, however resourcing improvements continues to be a barrier for change.
With the state election on 8th March next year, we are encouraging all members and friends to write to the WA government and ask them to properly fund health services for people with intellectual disability and their families.
To make this easier for you, we have attached a template letter (see draft further below) that you can edit to tell your family’s experience of the WA health system, or use it as is and send to:
- Premier Roger Cook – wa-government@dpc.wa.gov.au
- Minister for Health and Mental Health Amber-Jade Sanderson – Minister.Sanderson@dpc.wa.gov.au
- Opposition Spokesperson for Health Libby Mettam – libby.mettam@mp.wa.gov.au
- Your local Member of Parliament – Member List “Find Your MP” (parliament.wa.gov.au)
There is also a Plain English version of the template that you can support people with intellectual disability to send if they wish (click here to access Plain English version: https://ddwa.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Help-reduce-premature-death-of-PwID-Plain-English-TEMPLATE-LETTER-to-politicians-OCT-2024.docx).
I would appreciate it if you could copy me into your email, so that we have a better understanding of the specific issues you have faced. If you would prefer not to share your email with me, please feel welcome to email ddwa@ddwa.org.au and let us know that you have expressed your concerns to the Minister.
If you have any questions, please email me mary.butterworth@ddwa.org.au
or phone 0439 510 515.
Thankyou for your support.
Mary
Mary Butterworth, DDWA CEO
For you to copy and paste:
Template letter for you to email/post to politicians. Consider adding your personal story.
Dear Premier Cook or Minister Sanderson,
On average, people with intellectual disability die 27 years earlier than other people. People with intellectual disability also have 2 to 3 times higher incidence of mental health problems.
Whilst part of the reason directly relates to a person’s disability, other factors also lead to this huge disparity including:
- They have to wait longer at hospital emergency departments to be seen by a doctor.
- They are more likely to return to the emergency department within 30 days because they were not adequately treated on their first visit.
- Very few health professionals have received any training in how to best communicate with or provide support in an appropriate way. Some people have reported their family members with disability were not offered the same medical treatment or assessments such as MRI’s, scans or blood tests, when they were dysregulated.
- They are less likely to have routine health screening tests and procedures for early detection of health problems.
- 5. They face stigma and discrimination, when their physical or mental illness is missed, and attributed mistakenly to their disability (diagnostic overshadowing).
- Health professionals do not recognise that challenging behaviour can be a sign of physical or mental illness, as well as environmental problems including abuse. This leads to treatable conditions being missed.
- They can no longer present to hospital emergency departments or general medical services due to past medical trauma experiences.
As the parent/carer of a person accessing health services in WA my experience has been …[CONSIDER ADDING YOUR PERSONAL STORY HERE]
I am urging the WA government to allocate sufficient attention and resources to:
- Establish specialised intellectual disability health teams in each health region that specifically focus on improving the health and mental health outcomes for people with intellectual disability, particularly the transition from child to adult services, and make sure that the teams also have expertise in identification and management of commonly co-occurring conditions including autism, FASD and ADHD. These teams could build capacity within mainstream health services by offering education and specialised support. This is crucial to improve this situation. This is a priority recommendation of the Royal Commission (Recommendation 6.33 Develop specialised health and mental health services for people with cognitive disability), and WA is one of the only Australian jurisdictions that do not have these specialist centres.
- Introduce a “flag” for intellectual disability in WA health records so health professionals know that the person they are treating has an intellectual disability and what reasonable adjustments the person needs, to help them get good outcome e.g. simple speech, more time, easy read information. This would be a voluntary arrangement where people choose if they want their record “flagged”.
- Provide support and incentives to WA universities to include specific intellectual disability curriculum for medical, mental health, dental and allied health professionals, for example curriculum from the national centre for excellence in intellectual disability health. Another recommendation of the Royal Commission (Recommendation 6.25 Expand the scope of health workforce capability development to include all forms of cognitive disability at all stages of education and training). Disappointingly, WA Health’s recently released WA Heath Workforce Strategy 2034 that sets the workforce priorities for the next 10 years makes no reference to supporting staff with a disability, increasing the disability workforce, or building the capacity within the WA Health workforce to meet the recommendations made by the Royal Commission to improve access and equity for people with a disability.
- Utilise existing training materials from the National Centre of Excellence in Intellectual Disability Health to train health staff currently working in the health system.
- Promote and support the use of the CHAP (Comprehensive Health Assessment Program) Adult Comprehensive Health Assessment Program (CHAP) – Annual Health Assessment for People with Intellectual Disability | Australian Government Department of Health and Aged Care by GP’s to ensure people access all necessary health screening tests and services for example, BreastScreen WA.
- Ensure the world leading data system in WA is supported and developed on an ongoing basis.
Thank you for considering this request.
Yours faithfully,
[YOUR FIRST AND LAST NAME]
[YOUR SUBURB AND POST CODE]
