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FAMILY AND COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT COMMITTEE
Inquiry into social inclusion and Victorians with a disability
Melbourne— 24 March 2014
Members
MrsA. Coote / MrD. O’BrienMsB. Halfpenny / MsD. Ryall
MrJ. Madden
Chair: MsD. Ryall
Deputy Chair: MsB. Halfpenny
Staff
Executive Officer: DrJ. BushResearch Officer: MsV. Finn
Administrative Officer: Ms N. Tyler
Witness
MsJ. Willmer, chief executive officer, Travellers Aid Australia.
The DEPUTY CHAIR— Before we start I will just go through a couple of things I have to read out. As outlined in the guide provided to you by the secretariat, all evidence at this hearing is taken by the committee under the provisions of the Parliamentary Committees Act 2003 and other relevant legislation and it attracts parliamentary privilege. However, once outside the hearing you do not have the same parliamentary privilege for what you say. We are recording the proceedings and a copy of the transcript will be provided to you when it becomes available.
MsWILLMER— Thank you.
The DEPUTY CHAIR— Perhaps you would like to introduce yourself and give a presentation. We are looking at around 15minutes so that we have plenty of time to ask you questions.
MsWILLMER— Certainly, thank you. My name is Jodie Willmer and I am the chief executive officer of Travellers Aid Australia. What I would like to do is explain, firstly, what Travellers Aid does. I understand that other people you have heard from over the series of the hearings have mentioned Travellers Aid, so I would like to give you a bit of an overview of exactly what we do related to transport disadvantage and social inclusion and people with disabilities.
I have been the CEO of Travellers Aid since March 2006. Travellers Aid was started in 1916. I am not going to go through the near 100year history, but I think it is fair to say that in terms of our length of operations and our depth of knowledge about transport disadvantage, we are quite a specialist service. We are a notforprofit organisation. We have enjoyed longterm support from governments of all persuasions. We are bipartisan and we are a nonfaithbased organisation. We have developed our services over the years to meet the changing needs of the community. Essentially we have a goal to make everyday travel possible for people, and I will talk in a moment about our service philosophy.
I will give a short outline of the organisation. We are located at FlindersStreet station and Southern Cross station, so we are in the hub of the public transport system in metropolitan Melbourne and we are operating two pilot locations in regional Victoria, in northeast Victoria, in Wangaratta and Wodonga. When I talk later about innovation, I will tell you more about why we came up with those locations and how it relates to social inclusion and Victorians with a disability.
Our services are delivered within the hub of the public transport system in Melbourne to provide support to people who experience some sort of disadvantage. That could be lack of access to transport because it is not affordable or it might not be accessible in terms of the infrastructure. There might not be appropriate transport and it might not be available. Our goal of enhancing everyday travel for all people is to help people make choices about their transport and ensure that they are independent. We promote social inclusion via our services and also promote autonomy and independence. They are core service philosophies that we exhibit and we do that in a very integrated and personcentred way.
One of our service philosophies is about universal access, and by that I mean all of our services are designed to support people through the life cycle of their needs. I will give you a very practical example of that. People who might have children for the first time and are battling with prams, getting on and off transport of all modes, will experience things for the first time. There are a range safety issues, there is a range of confidence issues and there are infrastructure issues and information needs. If you think about the needs of people with disabilities using public transport or using other forms of transport, their needs change over their life cycles as well, as people age, as their health needs change and also their geographical location changes.
Likewise for people in an emergency and a crisis situation, their needs change over a period of time. If they are in a financial crisis or experiencing something that is impacting on their ability to be part of the community in some shape or form— for example, somebody who is fleeing family violence— they might be experiencing transport disadvantage at that point in time. They need to travel to a place of safety and they need to travel to access other services such as a shelter.
Thinking about the needs of people with disabilities, there are disproportionate increases of disadvantage. We have got high levels of unemployment, and I am sure some of the other people who have talked to the committee have cited some of the statistics about that. We also know that people with disabilities are often victims of acute financial and social disadvantage and experience more violence in the community than other people generally. Our services provide a range of support to people throughout their life cycle, including people who are frail, aged and people who are wanting to travel to be part of everyday life and to connect with friends and families.
Transport plays a key role in terms of social inclusion to enable people to make choices about how they spend their time; that could be catching up with friends and family, it could be travelling or holiday leisure and it could also be for volunteering, employment and education. So the services that Travellers Aid provides enables people to participate fully in the community.
Within Australia there are no other services like ours— a sort of onestop shop, so to speak. In the US and Canada there are about 60travellers aids. We are not a federated organisation and we operate independently, but there are some really interesting examples overseas about ways that training has been delivered to enhance people’s experience of travel in a multimodal context. I know that the focus of Janine Young, the Public Transport Ombudsman, was about public transport, but I would like to invite you to consider in terms of social inclusion, the role of other forms of transport, including air, sea, land, and private transport as well.
I would like to talk briefly about some of our services, and then I will go to address some of the key questions that were posed. In a snapshot of our services, Travellers Aid in the last financial year supported over 210000people. One of our key services that provides personal care support to people with disabilities is called our Travellers Aid Access Service that started in 1989. It was really born out of a need where people with disabilities were travelling into the city to take part in a range of things and they did not have personal care support. That was in a period of time in our social history where people were deinstitutionalised.
Travellers Aid Access Service has continuously operated to provide personal care support, and by that I mean practical things like helping people go to the bathroom, helping people with toileting and offering communication assistance and meal assistance. That program is funded through the Department of Health by the Victorian and Australian governments under the home and community care program. There were 4000hours of personal care delivered to clients last year, which enables people to participate in their everyday lives. I would just like to explain how that relates to the focus of the committee’s work, particularly for people with a disability and in relation to social inclusion.
In our recent newsletter— and I will leave copies of this for you— we profiled a story of one of our clients. His name is Rob, and he gave permission for us to use his real name. Rob uses a wheelchair, and he needs additional assistance to go to the bathroom and to access the toilet. If it were not for the Travellers Aid Access Service for him to drop in and get personal care support at Flinders Street or Southern Cross stations, he would not be able to be employed, because of the employment opportunities that are available. Employers do not have the skills or the necessary equipment or infrastructure, such as an accessible bathroom with a trackmounted hoist and an adult change table and someone to personally assist him. By enabling him to access our services, he is able to be included in the community and to earn an income and participate fully and make choices about how he spends his time.
The other services that we provide include the buggy service at Southern Cross station. The link with social inclusion and transport for people with disabilities is that the buggy service at Southern Cross station provides over 12000trips a year to people who are frail, aged or who have disabilities. You may have seen the small orange vehicles travelling through the station. The purpose of this service is to help people make connections between one mode of transport and another. It could be somebody travelling to Melbourne from regional Victoria for a medical appointment; it could be somebody who is visiting friends and family or coming to see a theatre show in Melbourne. The eligibility for that is really where people selfselect. They say, ‘I need this service’, and they book ahead. We also have excellent relationships with a range of transport operators and conductors who find somebody who needs support, and they call ahead.
The feedback that we get from people with that service in their own words is that if it were not for the Travellers Aid Access Service they would not get to take part in the community. It is not just the physical distances of walking. People who have psychiatric disabilities and people who have multiple and complex needs also require that service. If you can picture somebody who has claustrophobia or agoraphobia having someone to guide and support them through a massive, congested, busy railway station is the difference between that person travelling or not. Our supports are really about enabling people to participate.
I would just finish on two other services that we provide. One is called our travelrelated Emergency Relief Service, and this is a service for people in a crisis or emergency situation. Last financial year we provided 12710instances of service to over 4000clients. How this relates to social inclusion for people with disabilities is that people who use that service who are in a crisis or emergency often have very complex needs, and often disclose that they have multiple disabilities as well. They are not just in financial disadvantage but may also be suffering from mental health issues and perhaps physical disabilities as well. That program is funded through the federal government’s Department of Social Services’ trusts, foundations and corporate sponsorships and donations. Unfortunately, we do not have state government funding for that program any longer.
We also operate the Medical Companion Service. What we find with that program is that there are over 700clients who have used that service in the last 12months. It is a service that was born out of a pilot through the transport connections project, which was mentioned by the previous person. The purpose of the Medical Companion Service is to link volunteers to accompany people on public transport to go to medical appointments. We are finding that people who undertake the program as clients develop new skills and confidence about travelling on public transport, not just for the medical appointment but to then go and do things in their own time and in their own way in their lives. That enables people to make choices about how they spend their time and it builds up what we call ‘public transport confidence’. The service is delivered by volunteers with a paid coordinator. Twentyfour per cent of those clients have low or no vision, and larger numbers are from regional Victoria; about 95per cent are from regional Victoria.
It is fair to say that there had been a number of reports and plans about transport and its role in social inclusion and the needs of people with disabilities. I would just like to cite some of those plans and reports. One of them is the government’s Victorian State Disability Plan 2013–2016. Accessible Public Transport Action Plan was recently released by the government. Tourism Victoria has an Accessible Tourism Plan. There is the Public Transport Ombudsman’s Closing the Accessibility Gap report from September 2013, the Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission’s report Who’s on Board— Public Transport for People with Disabilities in Victoria and the Transport Integration Act 2010. There have been numerous projects, including Transport Connections programs, which have looked at different innovations to deliver transport solutions, but what I would suggest is that there has been a lot of plans but no integrated action. We have some suggestions on how that might take place when we come to the solutions.
If we look at what is happening in the community services sector in Victoria with the service sector reforms, there is a huge opportunity to have more of an integrated focus on social inclusion and transport and to consider what the opportunities are for mental health, homelessness, alcohol and drugs, family violence and disability in providing wraparound support for people. Unfortunately it is a bit difficult to navigate through the transport system.
Public Transport Victoria’s establishment has been a really welcome and important step, but I think the next challenge moving forward is how we empower people to understand what transport options they have and not just focus on the infrastructure as the barrier. There are opportunities to enhance the culture of customer service of all transport providers, in the private and public sectors and in community transport. Also, we should ask what the appropriate facilities that are required to make it a seamless journey are? So somebody with a disability who might use a catheter to actually have confidence that in travelling from one place to another they will be able to access appropriate bathroom facilities is the deciding factor as to whether they will travel or not. It is not just the infrastructure of how they get on and off the vehicle.