Table 2.

Impact of travel

Burden and impact of travel and cost of parking fees for aftercare appointments

“The appointments taking longer than what you’re allocated in your time, and you can’t just leave her there and rush out and fix up the parking meter because you’ve got to park miles away, so, yeah, it was – we ended up with a few parking fines.” “I said just take them to the park because otherwise you pay a motza of parking here and I’m like, nah, just go around the street and take them to the park and I’ll call him when we need to be picked up, so yeah.” “And the petrol … Last time we travelled all the way down, and because there’s nowhere to stay we just travel all the way back home. Seven hours down and seven hours back for appointments. My two boys have been affected because there’s been a lot of times where I’ve also had to take them out of school. So my little boy has missed out on a fair bit of school because the only time that we would have to come down here for the dressings or for certain appointments that [the country hospital] don’t provide, I’ve had to take him because I can’t leave him there. So he’s missed out on a fair bit of school, Katha also. You know, she’s in high school now and I’ve got to drive down here, have appointments, then drive back. That’s a minimum of 3 days if you want to push it, of high school days every month or two. Yeah, it’s really affecting her school attendance as well as my little boy’s school attendance, which isn’t good.”

Intransigent appointment times

“And my disabled son, goes to school on his own schedule, if he wakes up at 8.30, 9 o’clock, then I can get him off to school, but I have to drop him off at school and I explain that to them and they still made her appointments for first thing in the morning when I ask them for later appointments, and it’s like, really? So, we were late, so then they’d make us wait, so we could be there anywhere from 4 hours, I think, was our longest appointment.”

^aNot child’s real name