Rachel Forster, please redevelop it for the community - May 2006

I was appalled to read that the Redfern Waterloo Authority is planning to sell this important community site for residential development. This hospital site which has been run down and now abandoned by CSAHS is the perfectly situated to be developed for Mental, Respite and Convalescent Care for this Community. We have so many people with Mental Health Problems whose hospital care comes in Long Bay and all we have a Mental Health Outpatients Care in the Redfern Community Health Clinic that remains on the Rachel Forster site. Are we now to lose this facility as well? I would have thought that the publicity generated by the deaths of lonely people in Public Housing, especially where their bodies were not found for weeks or months, would have shown even the Redfern Waterloo Authority that this area needs more community health care – not less! This last month, even John Howard has recognized that the Mental Heath Crisis needs action. Please, redevelop this site for the community. Look at the demographics! We need Mental Health Care, we need Respite

Care for Carers and we need Convalescent Beds so that lonely sick people do not get sent out of hospital after their ‘short stay’’ to die alone!

Anne Giles

Redfern