ARTHRITIS sufferers in Tasmania have lost their on- ground support and will be forced to rely on a telephone information service.
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Arthritis Tasmania confirmed yesterday that it had scrapped the jobs of the three regional community educators.
The women were called to the organisation's Hobart headquarters, on Wednesday, to be told that they were dismissed, effective immediately.
Heather Donaldson, of Westbury, has worked for the organisation as its Northern community educator for 11 years.
She runs regular community information and support sessions across the North as well as individual support and advocacy.
She was still in shock yesterday at the sudden news and was worried about not being able to contact her clients.
Rachel Turner was appointed as community educator for the North-West region 18 months ago on a three-year contract.
Tracey Parry has been the Southern regional educator for some time.
Ms Donaldson said that she had client bookings from next week through to next year with no way of letting people know that she wouldn't be turning up.
"We were not even allowed to go back to our offices unaccompanied to collect our things," said a distressed Ms Donaldson.
Arthritis Tasmania chief executive officer Jackie Slyp said that the organisation had revised its service delivery plan. She said that the surprise sackings were not just to do with cost cutting.
"We are looking at delivering services in a different way, consequently the role of the community educators in the South, North and North-West are no longer part of that way," she said.
Instead of the on-ground regional officers, Arthritis Tasmania's service will now be an 1800 telephone service. The sackings this week will reduce staff hours from 128 to 76 a week and save about $50,000 annually, Ms Slyp said.
At the same time, the organisation has advertised for a full- time position, based in Hobart, to run the telephone service.
Arthritis Tasmania faced a similar crisis in 2005 when there was an attempt to shut down the North and North-West offices and concentrate on keeping its Hobart office open. Northern arthritis sufferers ran a campaign to keep the regional offices open and Ms Donaldson went to the then Health Minister David Llewellyn for help.
She was able to get a commitment from Mr Llewellyn that the group's recurrent funding would be more than doubled from $39,000 to $100,000.
Ms Slyp said yesterday that Arthritis Tasmania received about $85,000 from the state government annually.
"We are not covering costs and we can't go back cap in hand to the government all the time," she said.
She said that staff redeployment for the three women who had lost their jobs had been considered. "But the options don't exist," she said.
