Waiting years for paediatric care 'like waiting 12 hours with labour pain'

The pain isn't going to go away, and that woman will suffer while she waits.

This is what it's like for children and their families when they need to wait years for paediatric appointments.

This is happening around Dubbo and the Central West, where the wait-time for families accessing paediatricians can be upwards of two years.

An ex-primary school principal who cares for four children in Dubbo, who wanted to remain anonymous, said their family had experienced lengthy waits with paediatricians for the past nine years.

Their 12-year-old had waited 15 months for a psychologist appointment in Dubbo, and their eight-year-old had waited two-and-a-half years for a paediatrician.

The 12-year-old was three when she first saw a psychologist, which was paid for privately. The psychologist went on maternity leave and the child was referred to another psychologist.

That psychologist left and the girl was referred to another in the same practice. The pair didn't 'gel' and the child was referred elsewhere.

"It took me 15 months or longer to try to find someone. [The child] has complex trauma, post-traumatic stress disorder, attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder, a lower IQ than the other kids, lots of complex issues," the child's carer told ACM.

"She has seen six different psychologists. The only reason she has seen so many is, they don't stick it out here in our local area - they leave."

The 12-year-old's carer was told the girl, who is Indigenous, should see an Aboriginal psychologist, however there are few in the area, and the carer described getting in to see one as "trying to pick a sparrow out of the sky".

"There's been no consistency of psychologists for her," the carer said.

The girl's brother, who is eight, had to wait over two years to see a paediatrician to diagnose him with ADHD because he was considered "non urgent".

"Once he saw the paediatrician he was diagnosed with ADHD and medicated. Meanwhile, he lost 2.5 years of school," the carer said.

"That's the most important part of this - we can all wait in line and take our turn but these children at those ages, we already know how much their little brains are developing until they are five and then ... they're halted, they can't learn what they need to learn."

The boy also needed grommets in his ears which reportedly took over 18 months.

"I believe we're not getting these kids early enough with these specialists ... some of them are transient and you can't have that with kids."

Children's health charity Royal Far West is calling on the NSW government to provide $2 million each year for three years for two new rural paediatric assessment clinics, in Dubbo and Wagga.

The Dubbo clinic would provide a paediatric developmental assessment service delivered by a multi-disciplinary team, made up of a combination of local staff, telehealth and outreach.

Royal Far West CEO Jacqueline Emery said a long wait for an appointment meant that "the mental window where you can have an impact and change the trajectory of that child's development is starting to close very fast."

The proposed service would allow Dubbo families to get the paediatric support they need, close to home.

The Dubbo carer said it was a "no-brainer" the funding should be allocated to the Royal Far West hub.

Further, the carer wanted to see hubs in schools.

"If these hubs had an OT (occupational therapist) where kids are coming to school and are hyper ... there's things an OT can do that will calm them, and then they go into the classroom and they can learn ... " they said.

The lack of services also meant children who were witnessing violence at home were not given the chance for the cycle to be broken.

"We can see from the domestic violence figures that are going out at the moment in those homes, there are often children who've been witnessing this over years and years and years, they need psychological intervention that they're probably not getting," the ex-principal said.

"We're talking about history being repeated."

The situation is also affecting families. The carer and ex-principal said they had been forced to lessen their work hours to manage their children's appointments.

"It has a red light flashing to me," they said.

"I've been an advocate for these kids ... but there would be other kids out there who don't have someone with enough knowledge to be an advocate for their child or their children.

"And then we wonder why they end up in the juvenile justice system, because for parents, it's exhausting."

They continued: "What about families that have two or three children that require services? They wouldn't be able to work."