Parents in Gunnedah drove their 10-day-old to Tamworth hospital after paramedics found the child would not fit the harness.

Fairfax Media revealed last week the Ambulance Service ordered paramedics to stop using child-safety restraints, despite protests. 

In the Central West, Kate Anderson had been waiting for nearly five hours. Her two-month-old baby, Isabelle, was sick and getting worse.

“For about three days her feeds had been going down,” Mrs Anderson said. “She was running a fever.”

She arrived at Parkes hospital with dehydration. Attempts to insert a drip failed, a particularly difficult task on newborns. 

The nearest paediatrician was at Orange, an hour away. An ambulance was called. But the paramedics said: “We can’t.”

Several cases like Mrs Anderson’s have emerged where the policy change led to significant delays in taking children to hospital, or paramedics refusing to do so.

Instead of safety seats, paramedics have been told to strap children to paediatric harnesses, which many paramedics say are too large for children under four. But the Ambulance Service says they can be safely secured to their torsos.

Michael Griffiths, a former principal research scientist at the state government’s Traffic Accident Research Unit, disagrees. 

His crash tests on ambulances led to them adopting restraints in the 1980s and he is on the committee that sets Australian standards for child restraints. 

“I think it’s appalling,” he said. 

“This is putting safety at risk. There’s no safety standards for these [harnesses], or test protocols. It’s very sad to see the government go backwards.”

The Ambulance Service said the restraints were never meant for unwell children and they needed to undergo further safety testing, despite being in use for decades. 

But paramedics say they were used routinely for taking infants who were sick but not gravely physically injured on supervised trips to hospital, such as for cases of whooping cough.

Health Minister Jillian Skinner has said harnesses are the best option for transporting sick children in “most cases”. 

They were withdrawn after an audit found many had reached their expiry date and now sit in storage.

Paramedics have told Fairfax Media of more examples of confusion and delay:

In Penrith, two paramedics were told by a manager to disobey the directive and use a child restraint. They refused and the job was assigned to another crew.

After a paramedic at Mt Druitt refused to transfer a young child because of concerns about the harness, the job was immediately upgraded to emergency status, in what some interpreted as an attempt to pressure the paramedic.

The Australian Paramedics’ Association this week advised its members to ignore managers telling them to keep using the restraints and disobey orders. The union has argued paramedics have not been trained in how to harness children under four.

Back at Parkes, after an hour-and-a-half, Isabelle’s condition had worsened. The hospital called an anaesthetist, who it was thought would have the best chance of inserting a drip.

“They had to insert it in her head,” Mrs Anderson said. “There was quite a bit of blood. [I] was upset and angry at the same time. She shouldn’t have had to go through that”.

This pushed the paramedics into breaking an order, Mrs Anderson recalls. They returned to the station and refitted the car seats, a move they later reported to management, and took the baby to Orange. 

A spokeswoman for Ambulance NSW declined to reaffirm that harnesses were safe. But in a memo distributed to paramedics following questions from Fairfax, a top ambulance manager appeared to leave the door open for a backdown from the controversial policy. The service said it was finalising arrangements for a new policy on the restraints next week. 

Do you know more? jrobertson@smh.com.au