An article on your website, ‘Redlands to lose Child Development Service?’ has come to my attention and I want to provide the following assurance to your readers that there is no intention to cease services in the Redlands community.
Children’s Health Queensland (CHQ) provides safe, expert and accessible child development services throughout the greater-Brisbane area. In 2017, there were 3,961 referrals to CHQ’s Child Development Service (CDS). In 2018, demand increased by 22% to 4,831 referrals.
This demand is causing longer wait times for families needing to access child development services such as medical, psychology, social work, speech pathology, occupational therapy, dietetics, physiotherapy and nursing.
To ensure CHQ can continue to meet this growing demand and be responsive to the needs of individual communities, an internal review is currently underway to consider the best way to deliver services into the future.
CHQ engaged its frontline staff on proposed service delivery options, to gain input and insight to inform the decision-making process. This process is still underway. No decision has been made.
Currently, services delivered via the Redlands site are limited to speech pathology, occupational therapy and physiotherapy, with some access to services from social work, medical and psychology. There is no intention to cease these services. Children and families living in the Redlands area will continue to be eligible and receive these services.
Any change will aim to deliver a wider range of clinical services for Redlands’ families, closer to home.
CHQ’s priority is ensuring patients and families can access the right service, the right clinician, in the right location and we will continue to work with staff and other health services to achieve this.
Craig Kennedy
Divisional Director, Child and Youth Community Health Service
Children’s Health Queensland Hospital and Health Service
Published by Redlands2030 – 27 March 2019
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One Comment
Mr Kennedy, are you saying that the service will be available in the Redlands as it is currently, or will Redlands families (under the new structure) have to travel outside of the city to access these services? I suspect that this is a case of nomenclature: although services won’t “cease” they will move and in so doing, become more difficult for Redlands families to access, further disadvantaging an already vulnerable population. I hope you can prove me wrong.