THE Fremantle Heart Patients Support Group is winding up in acrimonious circumstances after 25 years.
Volunteers accuse the WA health department of a vindictive campaign to strangle them in red tape because of their effectiveness as a lobby goup for local cardiac services.
President Wayne Atkinson says the FHPSG will flatline in January after failing to reach agreement on shifting to Fiona Stanley, alongside the cardiac unit.
He says some bureaucrats have never forgiven the group for successfully lobbying to keep the heart unit at Fremantle Hospital a decade ago, when mandarins had wanted it moved to Royal Perth Hospital.
Talks over moving the group to Fiona Stanley stalled on a number of fronts: the department insisted the FHPSG pay insurance and indemnity coverage for its members, despite volunteers in a hospital normally covered by departmental policies. Members were also told to pay for their own police clearance checks.
The fees would have cost the group $10,000, when it only takes in $3000 a year in membership fees.
“We have been denied most of the rights that are afforded to volunteers under the department of health guidelines,” Mr Atkinson says.
To rub salt into the wound, the department proposed to include FHPSG members in its own general volunteer pool, and use them as tour guides—until being forced to back down. “I told them most of our members will walk away if they make us ‘wayfinders’,” Mr Atkinson told the Herald.
He says it speaks volumes that health bureaucrats are more interested in volunteers talking about art, music, gardening and pet care than “former cardiac patients” helping patients through the trauma of cardiac treatment.
Mr Atkinson believes about half the group’s members will stay on, regardless of the FHPSG’s treatment. Others feel they’re too old to start again, or say FSH is too far.
He says the group enjoys great support amongst the Fremantle heart unit’s staff, particularly nurses, but they’re unwilling to speak out because they’re afraid of missing out on FSH contracts.
The group’s demise brings some joy: Heartkids WA will receive a $200,000 donation from it’s liquidation of $530,000 in assets.
Notre Dame Uni will also benefit with $25,000 to establish a scholarship for students struggling financially. It’ll be named after FHPSG founder Hugh Jones, who died last December. Mr Jones, a former ambulance officer, worked tirelessly for others but didn’t leave enough money for his own funeral.
by STEVE GRANT