Productivity Commission Submission 

Disability Care & Support Inquiry
In support of Melissa Noonan, Executive Officer, Limbs 4 Life Incorporated’s Submission Aug.2010

Mollie Jones, Life Member
Amputee Association of Sydney
New South Wales   2152

This submission  contains NO confidential material.

Inquiry into Disability Care & Support – Submission from Mollie Jones – Amputee ex Sydney
Requesting to be read following Melissa Noonan’s submission from Limbs 4 Life Incorporated

Dear Madam/Sir, 
I would like to make the following points to the Disability Care & Support Inquiry. I have read the 
preliminary  report and am still very concerned that the matter of services available to the 
AMPUTEE section of the Australian community is still not being addressed as it should be. 
Most amputees have an acquired disability, as Melissa has explained in her excellent description of
our lives.  As individuals, we experience much difficulty in accepting our altered body shape and 
image.  As Melissa shows, leg loss, whether below or above knee level, predominates amongst us. 
So loss of mobility is our greatest challenge.   Individually we vary considerably.  These days many 
us value help and advice from physiotherapists as well as prosthetists when our return to active life 
is possible.  When weeks or perhaps months are spent in rehabilitation, we discover how our 
body’s ability to adapt is helped by exercises to maintain muscle strength.  This must happen before 
we can wear an artificial limb and stop sitting, especially if our limb loss occurred after fifty years of
 age.   
When amputees reach their seventies and body change becomes a factor that affects the fit of their
prosthetic limb, it is galling to have to wait for a statutory three years to obtain a new or better 
fitting limb as per the  current rules in New South Wales.  
As Melissa points out, we need to be treated individually and if we have managed to keep fit by 
keeping up with our favourite sport, we should not have to stop because our limb no longer fits our
 altering frame.
Sometimes I wish that non-amputees who suggest guidelines for programmes of financial support
could think of prosthetic limbs in the same way as they do a far more common prosthesis, a set of 
dentures.   The skill required by a limb prosthetist grows as he practises, as does a dental 
technician’s, but to a greater degree.  Limbs cannot be sold off the shelf anymore than teeth can.  To
suggest otherwise is financial folly.