Wednesday, 18 October 2023
Motions
Parenting support services
Motions
Parenting support services
That this house recognises the government’s support for Victorians starting or growing their families and in the critical early years of their children’s lives by:
(1) delivering public IVF;
(2) establishing Victoria’s first public egg and sperm bank; and
(3) expanding Victoria’s early parenting centre network.
The Allan Labor government is doing what matters. We are working hard so that prospective families have every opportunity to be happy, healthy and supported during a period of enormous change in their lives. We are helping more Victorians to realise their dreams of becoming parents through our nation-leading public IVF program, and we are ensuring that all new parents get the support they need in that very busy, sometimes challenging, always joyful transition to parenthood. Labor is making Victoria a safer, fairer and more affordable place to start and raise a family.
I will begin by discussing our government’s nation-leading public IVF reforms. Fertility care services like IVF are truly life changing. These services provide couples with fertility challenges, including single parents, LGBTIQ+ families and those with illness impacting fertility, with the opportunity to start or grow their family. But too often and for too many these services have not been within financial reach. While people requiring fertility treatments such as IVF are eligible for Medicare rebates, they can still be left thousands of dollars out of pocket. There are many reasons why someone may choose not to start a family, but their bank balance should not be one of them. That is why we are investing $120 million to deliver public IVF services right across our state.
Once fully operational, public fertility services will support up to 5000 people every year and provide up to 3375 treatment cycles, enabling more Victorians to realise their dream of having a family and saving families up to $10,000. These public fertility services will provide care to Victorians who currently have limited access to fertility services through private providers. Public fertility services were launched on 13 October 2022, and I am so proud that last week marked the one-year anniversary of public IVF in Victoria. I am also delighted to let the house know that our first public IVF baby is due any day now. The Royal Women’s Hospital and Monash Health have been delivering services out of hubs in Parkville and Clayton for over a year now, and over 1100 patients have commenced their treatment journey, with many more expected to undergo treatment cycles in the coming months.
Of course, being a government that governs for the whole of Victoria, we are improving access to fertility care through a network of satellite sites rolling out right across our state. Partner health service sites in Mildura, Epping and Bendigo have already opened their doors. The Premier visited the Bendigo site only last week to see it in action. Only a few months ago I had the great pleasure of visiting the new public IVF services in Mildura to meet with staff and one of their very first patients, Rebeka. Rebeka already has a child, which she was able to conceive through the miracle of IVF. But let me tell you this: Rebeka travelled thousands of miles, spent thousands of dollars and missed a lot of work in her journey to start her family. Florence is now three years old, and Rebeka is hoping that Florence will be joined by a brother or sister. The difference this time is that Rebeka can get the treatment and the care that she needs so much closer to home through our public service in Mildura. Further sites at Warrnambool, Geelong, Sunshine, Shepparton, Heidelberg and Ballarat are anticipated to be open by the end of 2023. Patients across Victoria also have the option to access consultations via virtual care, and local services are used where possible – for example, local diagnostics to minimise the need for patient travel.
As I have said, we are also improving access to donor egg and sperm through our public egg and sperm bank. The egg and sperm bank is an extension of the public fertility services that are based at the Royal Women’s Hospital and was launched on 2 July this year. Featuring state-of-the-art lab facilities and staffed with highly qualified fertility experts, the bank is the first of its kind in Australia. Demand for donated eggs, sperm and embryos has grown steadily over the past decade due to the number of people seeking access to assisted reproductive treatment. Opening the bank was designed to help support increased access to eggs, sperm and embryos and to save families money, making sure that IVF and access to egg and sperm banks is not just for those who can afford it but for the people that this government represents in this place – those who are sometimes doing it tough and who are not able to access the services that are more readily available to those with more money.
I have said before that children – babies in particular – are the original disruptors. Every new parent anticipates the arrival of their child with so much joy and looks forward to that experience. Every new parent expects to be sleep deprived, but it is not until it has happened to you that you really understand the very real impacts of that sleep deprivation. We know that the time of the arrival of a new baby into a family can be very challenging. It can be challenging for relationships. It can be challenging for other children. Sleep deprivation is only one of the challenges that new parents may face. Making sure that babies are feeding well is yet another challenge that many families experience. Making sure that there is time and space for attachment and bonding is very, very important for that child’s health and wellbeing into the future.
We want to ensure that the life-changing care and support that is delivered via our early parenting centres is made more broadly available right across the state. An early parenting centre is designed to feel like a home away from home. They support families with children up to the age of four, obviously giving those parents the care and support they need to be the parents that they want to be. Recognising that families come in all shapes and sizes, one of the things that I am really proud of is that our new early parenting centres deliver flexible care to enable families to receive the care however that family is made up. It might be a same-sex family, it might be an extended family or it might just be a mum on her own and maybe she wants her mum in to spend some time. There are so many ways in which families are made up these days, and our early parenting centres are there to support everyone.
As I said, it is not just sleeping and settling but feeding, play, care, bonding, attachment – all of these things – that are supported through our early parenting centres. A $148 million investment is upgrading two of our existing centres. We are building eight new centres in Geelong, Ballarat, Bendigo, Shepparton, Casey, Hastings, Whittlesea and Wyndham, and indeed going into the last election we made a further $18.9 million investment in the 2023–24 budget to deliver two more early parenting centres: an Aboriginal-led community controlled early parenting centre in Frankston and a new centre in Northcote. Let me tell you a little bit about Wyndham.
A member interjected.
Mary-Anne THOMAS: Yes. I first went to the Wyndham site some 12 months ago with the Treasurer to turn the first sod. Imagine then my joy at going back only a year later with the Premier, our new Minister for Children, the member for Point Cook, the member for Tarneit and the member for Laverton – all in here – to see this centre ready to take its very first families. Our government does what it says it is going to do. We get on, we deliver and we make sure that we are serving the needs of our community. The people of Wyndham are very, very happy. More than 130 babies are being born in Wyndham every week. I will let that just sit with you for a moment to think about what that means. This early parenting centre is going to be very well used and is very much welcomed by all of those on this side of the house. I will talk a little bit further about our early parenting centres. I do want to say thank you to the interim CEO at Tweddle, Umit Agis, and the director of nursing, Clare Pridham, for taking us through their incredible facilities. It really was an eye-opener for all of us who were there to see the facilities, to see the model of care and to see how this is going to really be a game changer for the families of Wyndham.
Having spoken about our early parenting centres I now want to take a moment, if I may, to acknowledge that it is Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month. I want to acknowledge my friend the member for Laverton for sharing her personal story and experience. Today she was joined by the member for Bellarine, who told us her story as well. Can I just say what a difference it makes having women in this place – more women than this Parliament has ever seen – getting up on their feet to share stories that too often have been hidden. As the member for Bellarine noted, we need to acknowledge the loss that mums and dads experience. I pick up on her point: we need to use the baby’s name; we need to acknowledge that loss of a child. Again, I thank the member for Laverton for her leadership in this area in making sure that as a Parliament we take into account and really understand the impact that the loss of a pregnancy or a stillborn baby has. We know that one in four pregnancies ends in miscarriage each year and approximately 3000 babies die from causes such as stillbirth and SIDS.
As I said, it is Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month, and I want to let everyone know that there will be a joint-party gathering in this place tomorrow, to which all members are invited, to learn more about the very important work that the Pink Elephants organisation is doing to make sure that we provide the care, love and support that grieving families need at this time. In doing so can I talk briefly also about the bereavement and support services that our health services deliver. Public birthing services across Victoria provide bereavement care and ensure referral pathways are available for those mums and families that need them at a time that should have been one of the happiest but for some families will be one of the saddest experiences of their lives. Maternity services and in particular services like the Royal Women’s, which deliver more complex care or support people at greater risk, provide onsite access to a range of services. Our government has funded cuddle cots across five public hospital locations: the Royal Children’s, Box Hill Hospital, Northern Hospital, Sunshine and Northeast Health in Wangaratta. The cuddle cots system means that parents can spend time with their baby who has passed away and family members can travel and say their goodbyes without the baby having to enter a mortuary. We also support the Perinatal Anxiety & Depression Australia, or PANDA, network, who provide their support to parents during pregnancy and the first year of parenthood, as well as Red Nose Australia, who provide targeted support for families who lose a child to SIDS.
I am conscious that I told the member for Lowan that I was only going to use 10 minutes, and I will take up the opportunity to do that. I think that would probably be welcomed. The work that we are doing to support families in realising their dream of having a baby is very special to me in so many ways. As a mother myself – and I join so many other mothers in this place – I know that great joy, but I also know the challenges along the way. We all know regardless of our own status, through our constituents, that there are many families out there that are struggling – and a newborn baby can be really difficult to manage and support. That is why our government is committed to wrapping around those families. We know that if we can get a family off to the right start, if we can give the baby the best care that it needs and if we can support parents to be the best parents they can be – the parents they want to be – then this will make an incredible difference in the outcomes for that child over the course of their life. Those investments in those first 1000, 2000 days are absolutely critical to the health and wellbeing of that child and that child’s chances of living the life that they want to live and making a great contribution to our community more broadly.
This truly is investment. This is investment in the future of this state. It is investment in families. Our Labor government supports families, and we support families wherever they are from and however they are formed. We believe that every parent deserves all the support that they can get to be the best parent that they can be, and our commitment to families is reinforced by the funding that we put behind it. As they say, if you want to see what a government’s priorities are, follow the money. And our government invests in babies, in mums and dads, in families and in children through their childhood, from birth right through to the end of their education and then as adults.
I commend this motion to the house. I know that there are many people across the house that want to speak on this, including those that want to share their life-changing experiences through support that they have received either via IVF, through their maternal and child health service or at early parenting centres. This is a really important motion, and it is important that this house spends time on it to recognise that if we deliver for families, then we are delivering for our state.
Sitting suspended 1:00 pm until 2:02 pm.
Business interrupted under sessional orders.
The SPEAKER: I acknowledge in the gallery the Consul General of Türkiye, Doğan Işık.