Pool pressure

By Ed Merrison
DEMAND for a public hydrotherapy pool in Knox looks set to land all levels of government in hot water.
Ferntree Gully physiotherapist Claire Oaten and her parents Ken and Margaret are ramping up a campaign to get Knox City Council to provide a purpose-built hydropool in the municipality.
The Oatens have distributed a survey to local health professionals, retirement villages and community groups to gauge community support for such a facility.
They hope results will persuade the council of the need for such a facility and strengthen the latter’s hand in looking to other levels of government for funding.
Ms Oaten, who works at The Gully Physiotherapy Clinic, said people in need of hydrotherapy such as sufferers of spinal pain or arthritis and those injured in workplace or road accidents, had to travel as far as Dandenong or Ringwood for appropriate facilities.
Such a journey might be out of the question for the elderly or immobile, and the drive home would cancel out the benefit for a sufferer of chronic pain, Miss Oaten said.
Meanwhile, she believes no public pool in Knox meets the needs of Knox’s large ageing and disabled population.
Ms Oaten said Knox needed a pool the mobility-impaired could get in and out of on their own.
Such a pool would need to be at least 1.3 metres deep to provide buoyancy, large enough to cope with large numbers of users and heated to about 34 degrees, as cooler temperatures could aggravate conditions such as arthritis.
Mr Oaten said hydrotherapy was important for people’s mobility, independence and enjoyment of life, and he was certain a cost-benefit analysis would come down in favour of a new facility. He said he was disappointed by the State Government’s decision not to fund a needs assessment, which was based on the fact that an Eastern Health’s hydrotherapy services at a Burwood East centre had not exceeded capacity.
“What we’re doing is demonstrating the support, the logic and the strength of the proposal in view of the ageing population,” he said.
Council community services director Gerard Jose said the council had been aware of the issue for four of five years.
“It is council’s current position that it is the responsibility of the state and federal governments to determine and provide health services within Knox, including the provision of community hydrotherapy facilities,” he said.
But Federal La Trobe MP Jason Wood said the issue had only recently come to his attention, while State MP Anne Eckstein said, “The ball is in the council’s court and always has been.”
Ms Eckstein said the council had “mucked up” by not including a hydropool at its Leisure Works centre in Boronia, which was partly paid for by State Government money.
She said the council would have to approach the Sports Minister to persuade him “to put in more money because they had got it wrong”.
Ms Eckstein said it was not a matter for the Health Department, but Miss Oaten and fellow health professional Anne Lord, who works at the same clinic, disagreed.
Ms Lord, who has been a practising physiotherapist for 23 years and worked in Ferntree Gully for 11 years, believes people in Knox need a hydropool for the health benefits.
“Hydrotherapy is more specifically a health issue and can definitely be used as a preventative health measure,” she said.