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Early Sunday morning around 1am one of our residential supervisors has heard some noise,
some boys shouting from one of the residential units and has called on the phone directly
to that unit to find some of the boys there quite distressed, they've immediately gone
over and attended that unit and found one of the boys having convulsions and another
one of the boys is very agitated and unwell. Immediately the residential supervisor has
used some first aid to put that student in a recovery position and check that the airways
are clear, immediately called an ambulance, and the ambulance has attended and taken those
students to the hospital. Two students attended in the ambulance, another two students followed
behind with the residential supervisor, who stayed at the hospital until the parents,
who were immediately notified, came to the hospital.
We're not able at this stage to identify much in relation to the boys, this is a police
investigation, they are from the country, they are at our residential hostel and at
this stage that's about as I'm pleased to give. Our first point of call really is the
health and well being of the four students and their families, we have counsellors available,
psychologists available to the residential college that come from the Education Department,
and they're out there assisting, so that's the first thing. These children are someone's
sons and so we want to support and help the families as well. Second of all, of course
we have a responsibility to all of the other students and their parents and they will be
notified of the incident and that's our regular way of operating in these circumstances.
We're hearing about this now because there was an overdose, what is the history of drug
use like in these colleges, like is it a problem? We shouldn't jump to use of the term, for
example 'overdose', that hasn't yet been established, certainly one student reacted badly to the
use of what allegedly is synthetic LSD but that is a matter for police. Can I just say
this and make this very clear, there is no pattern or history of drug use at our residential
colleges, they're are high quality colleges, we cater for many students around Western
Australia, and there is nothing to suggest that this is anything apart from a one off
very sad and very unfortunate incident, but any incident needs to be looked at closely
and that's certainly what I intend to do. It's very clear to me that the college has
an annual program of education and curriculum around drug and alcohol use in addition to
that, day by day week by week the message couldn't be stronger and clearer and the same
is said in our schools, we are very clear with our students that this is risk taking
behaviour that really puts young people in a very vulnerable situation. And as you all
know there have been a couple of really sad incidents in Perth you know over the last
12 months so I think it couldn't be clearer to young people, but having said that we will
continue to get this message out there to make education available to students that
this is just behaviour and risks that put their lives at great risk.
Look we don't have regular professional development about how to respond in the case of synthetic
LSD, it's a really new drug, but what we do have in place for all of our staff is updates
and remembering that these staff are what we call ' in loco parentis', they act in a
day-to-day basis like parents, they are greatly concerned for the students, they care for
them really well, obviously this residential supervisor has followed the book, they were
at the top of their game. They put the young person in the recovery position, they gave
him initial first aid, they made direct contact with the ambulance and the parents, and I
take my hat off the people who did the right thing here otherwise this could have been
a much worse situation.