by Madeleine Collins

Gloria Boyd’s phone has been running hot since the shock announcement that financial pressures will force Anglicare’s boarding school for intellectually disabled children to shut its doors within 12 months. The school’s Principal says condolences have been pouring in from parents, teachers, donors, community groups, colleagues and churches. “I can’t really believe it,” Mrs Boyd admits. “We are really still coming to terms with it. It’s so much a part of our world.”
After 27 years, the charity’s Kingsdene Special School and five-day residential program, based in Telopea, will cease operating at the end of 2004. The closure follows a drastic fall in Anglicare’s operating income caused by a downturn in investment funds. It comes in the wake of a string of cuts to several of its other core welfare programs just 12 months ago. According to the charity’s Chief Operating Officer, Peter Gardiner, the financial situation is so bad that the closure of whole programs was inevitable.
“I’m very disappointed that we’ve had to come to this decision,” Mr Gardiner said. “Over the past four years we’ve pulled in over $2 million of program savings but that’s not been enough. Kingsdene was a very difficult decision to make but it’s one of those programs where it’s all or nothing. You can’t cut back on one of the teaching staff because that impacts six children. You can’t cut back on the residential staff because you require those established levels of staffing to care for the children safely. We’re beyond the stage of being able to tinker around the edges.”
The finger is now being pointed at the government to realise the value of centre-based respite care. “It takes new people coming into Kingsdene months and months to settle, and to get used to the range of staff to care for them. The families just find it really unworkable having a different person coming into the house for two or three hours at a time once a week or twice a week,” Mr Gardiner says. “That’s what [the government is] offering at the moment but there aren’t even enough resources to give enough home-based respite to families.”
If the government does not change its policies, Anglicare believes the result will be more family breakdown and abuse. “For a number of families Kingsdene was their salvation,” Mr Gardiner said. “Some of the families who came to Kingsdene had already broken down. There was a single mum left with a number of children, one of whom with a very substantial intellectual disability – and [she] just wasn’t coping. Unfortu-nately, the government was saying, ‘if you just can’t care for these children then you might have to notify them as children at risk to DOCS’.”
Apart from Common-wealth and State Government funding and parental contributions, Anglicare will spend almost $1 million, or $37,000 per child, to run the boarding school in 2004. Most of the school’s 25 current students suffer from severe autism and have no verbal communication. “From birth, the children haven’t coped with life,” Mrs Boyd says. “Every day is a difficult day for them. We’ve had hundreds of students over the years. Mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, grandparents – they’ve been given the chance to experience life. It’s through the love of Jesus that has been shown to each child that trusting relationships have [been formed], and led to skills development. Families have able to hang in there.”
A spokeswoman from the NSW Department of Ageing, Disability and Home Care (DADHC), said the closure was not the result of failed funding negotiations between Anglicare and DADHC. The government is particularly concerned to ensure the parents and children will find alternative schooling and support, she said.