Guilt and love both tumble together in the mind of Sally Madelly when she talks about her daughter, Shani, who has a mental disability.
"The reason she is disabled is because I am a severe epileptic," the mother said in a flood of tears.
"I poisoned her," she sobbed. "I had to take so many strong drugs and they poisoned her."
There was no scientific evidence for her belief that the epilepsy drugs she took when she was pregnant caused her daughter's mental impairment. There were no medical warnings. All the same, she still carries the guilt.
But to see the two of them together is to witness unspeakable love.
Despite being 43, Shani has a mental age of about 12. She needs care and Sally needs relief - which the two of them get two days a week through a program for people with a disability run by Carers ACT in Holt.
But the program is to close. When Shani learnt, she was beyond consolation, her mum said.
"I come here Tuesday and Wednesday and make new friends," the 43-year-old with a child's mind said.
"I like making new friends and we share a lot," the daughter added.
"We do lots of cooking and share crafts. We go out and about, go to the zoo. We do all sorts of things. I bring Jazz down, our dog."
"It's the first place which treated her like a human being," Sally, Shani's mother, said. In other places they tried, people with mental disabilities were given little more than colouring books. But the Hub Disability Day Program, to give it its formal title, is "the only place where they have a life. They get them dancing. They get them moving".
Carers ACT blamed money pressures for a "difficult" decision: "Like many organisations across the community sector, Carers ACT is responding to increasing operating costs, funding pressures and changes across the disability and aged care sectors".
"Changes to funding arrangements mean these services have increasingly required Carers ACT to subsidise their delivery, and this is no longer financially sustainable."
The organisation which describes itself as the "voice for carers in the ACT" wouldn't go into any detail.
One of the problems may be that the federal government is planning to cut spending on the National Disability Insurance Scheme that funds schemes like the one Shani Madelly is on. The federal government's changes would cut $13.2 billion over four years from NDIS budgets for "community participation". There are currently 12,597 Canberrans on the NDIS.
Carers ACT is also in some turmoil.
It is advertising for a new chief executive, with the ad on EthicalJobs website saying the deadline for applications is August 2.
"This is an exceptional opportunity to lead one of the ACT's leading community organisations and make a genuine difference to the lives of carers and the people they support," the pitch reads.
But the previous chief executive Cain Beckett took up the job in only April last year. The start was promising. Carers ACT said at the time that "Cain's appointment marks an exciting new chapter for the organisation".
But the chapter was a short one. Mr Beckett resigned in May this year, only a year and a bit into the new job. It seems his views on the future didn't coincide with those of the board.
When he started he said he had big plans for Carers ACT.
"One of the first things I want to do is raise the profile of the organisation," he said when he took over.
"I'm trying to be a bit more loud about what we do. I'm really excited about where we can take the organisation."
Now he's not involved with Carers ACT, he wouldn't comment on whether and why he got so disenchanted with it or it with him. He is silent on whether there was a personality clash or whether his aims and the board's aims were at odds or whether something else was the reason for the split.
"No comment," was his response to questions from The Canberra Times. Carers ACT wouldn't comment beyond the broad statement on its website.
