News
The Continence Foundation of Australia is the national peak body promoting bladder and bowel control health.
By Jo Earp, Editor of Teacher.
This is an edited version of an article that first appeared in Teacher Magazine, published by ACER. Reproduced with kind permission. Visit http://www.teachermagazine.com for more.
Welcome to the Summer 2023 edition of Bridge. This edition has a special focus on toilet training, with plenty of information and tips to ensure a positive experience for your child. Summer offers an excellent opportunity to start toilet training and we have a page full of online toilet training resources for you on page 18.
Toilet Training Resources
The Continence Foundation of Australia has resources available to help your child reach those important toileting development milestones and gain greater toileting independence. All our resources are user-friendly with pictures and easy to follow steps, providing a general guide for parents and caregivers.
Melissa is 31, married with two children and she is an early childhood educator. Her eldest child, Bella, has encopresis, a condition she did not know existed before her child was diagnosed with it. “I didn't even know incontinence was a thing for people who didn't have severe disabilities. Toilet training went really well, as expected. You know, there were accidents here and there and then about a month in, she stopped doing poo in the toilet and it was just accidents, accidents, accidents.”
National Public Toilet Map
Plan your summer holidays with the national public toilet map.
Need to take the children to the toilet, change a baby’s nappy or find an accessible facility?
With Dr Janet Chase
Dr Janet Chase is a physiotherapist, academic and a founding member of the Continence Foundation of Australia. She started her career in women's health and has been a clinician in continence care for the past 35 years. “So many of the adults I was seeing said to me, ‘you know, this has always been a problem for me since I was a child’. So, I thought, why aren’t we treating the children?”
Persistent Pelvic Pain (PPP) is defined by the International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP) as ''pain in the area of the pelvis, present on most days for more than six months.'' PPP affects one in five Australian women and has numerous potential causes. We spoke to Pelvic Floor Physiotherapist, Amy Steventon, Bachelor of Physiotherapy and Post Graduate Certificate Continence and Pelvic Floor Rehabilitation, from Jean Hailes for Women’s Health. Amy has worked with and supported numerous women who experience PPP.
Welcome to the Spring edition of the Bridge Magazine where we reflect on Women’s Health Week (WHW) and our community partnership with Jean Hailes, dedicated to the health and wellbeing of all women, girls and gender-diverse people.
In this edition we focus on persistent pelvic pain, which affects up to one in four women and one in ten men worldwide. As this is a WHW issue, we look specifically at persistent pelvic pain in women and how it can impact a woman’s health and wellbeing.
Margaret worked as a nurse continence specialist at Caboolture Community Health in Queensland for many years. People could self-refer to the clinic where they ran a three-month continence treatment program after an initial assessment by Margaret and a pelvic health physiotherapist.
Margaret loved her work as a community nurse, sometimes sharing her own personal journey with incontinence when listening to and supporting her patients.
I am 27 years old and wanted to share my story in the hope that it would help others who are going through a similar experience.
I was born in India and moved to Australia with my family when I was three. I have always had debilitating period pain. Mum always said that I needed to put up with it, as it had been the same for her. I could never use a tampon as it was too painful. When I was 15, I remember a GP suggesting I should go on the oral contraceptive pill, but Mum said I wasn’t sexually active, so I didn’t need contraception.
Many years ago, when I was living in London, I worked with a woman who embarked on the Camino de Santiago solo in Spain. Each week, I would watch as she prepped and trained for this magnificent achievement. She didn’t know it, but at the time she lit a fire in me that I have been stoking for 22 years; that I too one day would do my own Camino trek.
Trauma can have a profound and long-lasting impact on individuals. If you have experienced a traumatic event in your life, you may benefit from traumainformed care. Many people experience trauma in their lives and often more than once. The experience of trauma is very individual as is the impact. Experiencing trauma can affect you psychologically, physically and socially. It can result in a person not feeling safe, not feeling they have a voice, not feeling valued, not trusting other people and not being able to connect with support and services.
Authors: Dr Joan Ostaszkiewicz, Dr Jessica Cecil, Dr Elizabeth Pascoe and Elizabeth Watt
When Maureen’s husband was diagnosed with dementia 10 years ago it represented a gradual but significant change in the dynamic of their relationship.
“Going from a relationship of being a wife, to being a carer, you need to get past that barrier. I think initially it was the grief. For a year or so, I was grieving the loss of my husband, the loss of his ability to look after himself and the loss of intimacy in our marriage.
Margaret is a perfect example of a woman in her 70s who is busy, active and living her best life despite having to manage a challenging and sometimes changeable daily bowel routine.
“I want to raise awareness about incontinence, open the dialogue and encourage people to feel comfortable talking about it,” says Caitlyn Davey, a journalist who lives with a neurogenic bladder. Caitlyn’s condition means she does not have control over her bladder and needs to self-catheterise, emptying her bladder with a catheter at regular times during the day, for the rest of her life.
Welcome to the Winter edition of Bridge Magazine. In this issue we acknowledge World Continence Week, 19 to 25 June, with a focus on the lived experience of incontinence. Over five million Australians, one in four people, aged 15 years or over, experience bladder or bowel incontinence. In this edition, we share the stories from a diverse range of people with lived experience, including Hawthorn Premiership hero and Brownlow Medalist Robert “Dipper” DiPierdomenico.
Every year, the Continence Foundation of Australia calls for nominations for the Carer of the Year Award, which publicly acknowledges the vital role that carers play in supporting the health and wellbeing of so many in our community. The Carer of the Year Award was presented during the National Conference on Incontinence in June 2023.
The recipient of the 2023 Carer of the Year Award is Jenny Roe, who was nominated by continence nurse, Bronwyn Peck.
Ever since an article about Robert ‘Dipper’ DiPierdomenico’s experience with urinary retention was published in the Herald Sun Newspaper in December 2022, he has been continuously approached by people with similar stories. “What they commonly say to me is this is happening to me too, what should I do?” he says. Sometimes he is approached by women who’ve recognised similar symptoms in their male partners and want them to seek help. “My advice is to always go straight to your GP,” he says. “Help is available so go and get it so you can get on with living a better life.”
When we think about the cost of incontinence, we mainly think about continence pads or products you wear to contain or absorb any leakage, but there are a lot more expenses faced by someone living with incontinence than this. The cost of incontinence can affect many aspects of a person’s life. The costs may be direct (e.g. continence pads), indirect (e.g. loss of wages due to sick leave) and intangible (e.g. psychosocial costs such as stress and decreased quality of life costs). To summarise, these include: