Mike Freelander (Macarthur, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Last week in Campbelltown, in my electorate of Macarthur, I attended the dedication of a sensory room to Stewart Einfeld, emeritus professor at the Brain and Mind Centre at the University of Sydney. The sensory room is in the infant, child and adolescent mental health service, where many children with complex mental health problems are seen. The room was funded by donations, mostly raised by the Kids of Macarthur Health Foundation. The dedication was attended by many of my health colleagues, and it was a great day.

Emeritus Professor Einfeld is a friend and colleague who, over many years, has provided help and support in the management of children and adolescents with intellectual disability and complex mental health disorders. Stewart has research and teaching interests in child and adolescent psychiatry, developmental disabilities and their genetic causes, and autism. He has many publications and is the co-developer of the Developmental Behaviour Checklist, which is widely used around the world in clinical and research settings and has been translated into 21 languages. He's the co-investigator of the Australian child to adult development study, the ACAD study, which is a 20-year project funded by the NHMRC and is widely recognised around the country as a wonderful research project.

Stewart is retiring from clinical practice, and I express my gratitude for the help and support that he's provided to my patients and their families over many, many years. Some of these patients are among the most difficult cohort of children to manage in paediatric practice, with problems like genetic disorders such as Prader-Willi syndrome, fragile X syndrome, fetal alcohol syndrome, severe intellectual disability and non-verbal autism, autism with self-injury, and aggressive and violent behaviour in people with intellectual disability.

Stewart's advice was always measured, accurate and compassionate. He well understands the social determinants of health and is always supportive of families with huge burdens upon them. I express my utmost gratitude to Stewart and wish him well in the next phase of his life. I will forever remember his advice and his very cogent help for some of the very distressed families that I have seen with children that are incredibly difficult to manage. I don't think that I've ever met anyone who has been as compassionate and as supportive as Stewart in managing some of these extremely difficult children and adolescents.

I will miss his really wonderful support to these families and wonderful support to my paediatric practice, as will many of my paediatric colleagues. No-one has given support to us in this field like Stewart Einfeld, and he is a real icon of child and adolescent psychiatry in this country. He well understands the intersection of intellectual disability and autism and other genetic disorders, and I thank him for his help. (Time expired)