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Hunters Hill Local News |
16 June 2010
CORNUCOPIA OF OPTIONS
Cornucopia of options
15 Jun 10 @ 11:44pm by Melissa Davey
Mental health clinical policy unit associate director Chris Shipway (left) hears concerns from carers and families of cafe workers.Picture:MELISSA DAVEY
WORKERS from the Cornucopia Cafe in Gladesville, along with their carers and parents, were told last week what NSW Department of Health staff would be recommending for the future of the cafe program.
Fifty people with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, depression and anxiety are employed in the cafe to help them learn vocational skills and re-enter the workforce.
Over the past few months NSW Health staff had been reviewing the program after reassuring staff and their families that the jobs would be safe.
Among the recommendations were: maintaining the status quo; staying the same but putting a time frame on employment; developing a clear and limited time frame of employment after which staff, including current staff, would have to move into other employment; and, to call for tenders to pass the operational management of the cafe to a non-government organisation.
Bernadette Beinke, whose 27-year-old son Patrick works at the cafe, said while she was happy with aspects of the review there were still many points that needed to be clarified.
She said she was concerned by one of the recommendations that staff were given a fixed period to work, after which they would be encouraged to find work in the wider community.
“That worries me,” Mrs Beinke said. “We’ve talked about this so often, that even a person who is not dealing with any mental health issues and side-effects of medication in a normal employment situation may need longer than six months to pick up skills.
“The department needs to clarify this, it seems to me they’re just trying to get as many people as they can through the program which isn’t necessarily going to work for these staff members.”
Mrs Beinke said rather than pushing people through the program she would like to see funding for the program replicated in other areas.
“Cornucopia isn’t a soft option for the staff there, they do have to perform and do well,” she said.
“My son has been encouraged to go to TAFE and is about to finish his third year doing commercial cookery. He hasn’t been back in hospital once since working there, but I don’t think that would be the case if he’d been forced into a normal employment situation.”
Mental health clinical policy unit associate director Chris Shipway said one of the department’s main concerns was establishing a contract between the Northern Sydney Central Coast Area Health Service and the Macquarie Area Rehabilitation Service for running the cafe program.
Courtesy of Northern District Times
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