Wednesday, 8 June 2022

 Dr CUMMING (Western Metropolitan) (09:44): One in 10 children are being diagnosed with depression, anxiety or autism. Our children are our future. For the last two years our children were locked down. They were being schooled at home. They were locked out of playgrounds. They were stopped from doing sports. They could not see their family and friends. Some students have no physical or neurological impairment but have difficulty in concentrating, communicating or understanding. This obviously was not helped by masks. For many children this was made worse over the last two years because of disruption to their schooling.

Many children have gone undiagnosed, and the cost is outside the reach of many families. Teachers do not have the resources or the funds to diagnose them. Having been diagnosed with dyslexia myself, I understand how frustrating this is for children. They need our help. We need to ensure that there are more resources for families and for schools to help children with learning difficulties as well as the funds for helping them get diagnosed. We need to ensure that no child is left behind. This government needs to step up for our children. We could have during this pandemic put a beautiful bubble around them, making sure that they actually went to school—that they had a normal life. We need to do more.