National Disability Insurance Scheme Advisory Group Appointments

DARU Update

17 October 2011

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IN THE NEWS

National Disability Insurance Scheme Advisory Group Appointments

Joint Media release, Jan McLucas, Jenny Macklin, 10 October 2011

The Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs, Jenny Macklin and the Parliamentary Secretary for Disabilities and Carers, Senator Jan McLucas have announced the appointment of the National Disability Insurance Scheme Advisory Group.

The Advisory Group will help steer the development of a National Disability Insurance Scheme by providing advice on progress with the foundation reforms required to fundamentally improve the system of care and support for Australians with disability and their carers.

The new appointees to the Advisory Group are Dr Ken Baker, Dr Lorna Hallahan, Ms Joan McKenna-Kerr, Mr Brendan O’Reilly and Ms Fran Vickery. The new appointees will join the Advisory Group Chairman Dr Jeff Harmer AO, Dr Rhonda Galbally AO and Mr Bruce Bonyhady AM.

The Advisory Group brings together a wealth of knowledge about the experience of people with disability and carers, the challenges for the service sector and government administration.

The group includes people with expertise in social insurance principles, disability policy, service provision, performance monitoring, training and curriculum development, academia and research, psychological and intellectual disability, indigenous disability services, young people and children with disability.

The Advisory Group will work closely with all governments as they work to deliver foundation reforms in preparation for a National Disability Insurance Scheme.

Foundation reforms include developing common assessment tools, so that people's eligibility for support can be assessed fairly and consistently, based on their level of need, no matter which state or territory they live in.

The reforms also include service and quality standards so that people with disability can expect high-quality support; building workforce capacity so we have more trained staff to support people with disabilities; and developing rigorous timelines, milestones and benchmarks to support the delivery of these and other foundation reforms.

The Advisory Group will work with the disability sector and conduct a series of community workshops around the country.

To read the full story, visit:

Dispute Sparks New Look at Alphabet Boards

The Age, Michelle Griffin, 10 October 2011

A controversial communication technique will be reviewed by the state government after a legal dispute over the intellectual capacity of a woman with severe cerebral palsy.

Disability agency Scope has been commissioned by the Department of Human Services to assess communication aides who help the non-verbal to communicate by methods such as guiding their hands across alphabet boards.

The technique, known as ''facilitated communication'', will be part of a state-funded study of all assisted communication programs for the disabled.

In May, the Supreme Court upheld the right of the DHS to ban Dr Rosemary Crossley from taking 49-year-old client Leonie McFarlane, who has severe cerebral palsy, to Adelaide for a conference. Ms McFarlane's parents objected because they believed their daughter did not have the intellectual ability to co-write a power-point presentation on her life.

The presentation was co-written with Ms McFarlane's childhood friend, the late Annie McDonald, a non-verbal woman with cerebral palsy who won the right to make her own decisions in the Supreme Court in 1980.

While the McFarlanes and Dr Crossley have reached a settlement over visitation rights at VCAT - the details of which remain confidential - the 30-year debate about facilitated communication rages on.

Dr Crossley said she was concerned about ''the adversarial nature'' of the DHS approach to the review, as the department consulted emeritus RMIT Professor Alan Hudson, a critic of facilitated communication, during the legal dispute.

''I could understand there being scepticism, but that was when there were problems 20 years ago,'' she said. ''Since then … the technology has got better, our techniques have improved, the knowledge of what are and are not appropriate validation strategies have improved considerably.''

VALID (Victorian Advocacy League for Individuals with Disability) on its website has denounced facilitated communication as ''quackery'', warning parents of its clients to reject Dr Crossley's agency deal.

''People risk being exposed to something which is completely unvalidated and potentially manipulative,'' said its executive officer Kevin Stone.

Supporters of Dr Crossley's methods are calling on the state government to validate her communication methods.

''The risk is that people coming through, children with autism or cerebral palsy, will not be given that chance to communicate if policies or mindsets are hardened against it,'' said Communications Rights Australia advocate Eden Parris.

Tim Chan, an autistic student who was taught to use a talking keyboard by Dr Crossley when he was nine, has released a letter of support, saying: ''If I had not learned to use facilitated communication, it would have been impossible for me to show other people what I already know, and how I think and feel.''

At his home, the 17-year-old answered questions independently, his mother Sarah Chan's hand on his shoulder. Asked if his aides had always typed what he intended, Mr Chan typed: ''I think it was mostly things I want to say but at times we are all influencing one another.''

To read the full story online, visit:

Leading Women Celebrate Success

Kristian Silva, The Guardian Swan Hill, 5 October 2011

The participants of a new leadership course for women with a disability have come a long way in the past three months.

The nine members of the LeadAbility for Women course have built their confidence and improved their skills in communication, project management, governance and future planning at workshops in the Swan Hill, Buloke and Gannawarra shires.

The program's participants have a wide range of abilities, including those with mental illness or conditions, brain injuries and some with physical disabilities.

LeadAbility project officer Alice Saville said the aim of the course was to enable the women to be more involved in the community.

"Women with disabilities are far more isolated than men with disabilities," she said.

"The course has helped them expand their circle of friends and they have been learning how to speak in public."

One of the participants who is on the way to conquering her fear of public speaking is Clare Steed.

Ms Steed was forced to tackle her problem head-on when the ABC's 7.30 show turned up to one of the workshops for an interview.

"It was huge for me because I've never been on television before," she said.

With her confidence now up, Ms Steed said she wanted to help out in the aged care industry in the coming months.

Another member, Raelene McNaughton, said the pilot program had enabled her to make many new friends.

The course also gave her a better understanding of how others handle their own disabilities, she said.

"It does us all some good to look outside the circle and see how others cope with their problems," Ms McNaughton said.

With the program due to finish this month, its success has prompted calls for it to be rolled out across the state.

To read the story online, visit:

To view the segment "Laughter is the Best Medicine" featured on the 7-30 report on Friday 30 September 2011, visit:

They All Deserve So Much Better

Alice Monfries, Sunday Mail (SA), 9 October 2011

(In South Australia) untrained support workers are being sent into the homes of the elderly and disabled without police checks, basic first aid and little if any information on the needs of their clients.

In-home care provider agencies are struggling to meet an explosion in demand for their services since the state government funding increased to more than $300 million, to help more people with disabilities and the elderly remain in their homes for longer.

Instead of providing support and respite to families, in-home care is actually distressing many relatives, they say, with its revolving door of well-meaning but unskilled workers.

Most of them are paid as little as $16 an hour for what is often physical, confronting and sometimes dangerous work, prompting many to quit the sector.

Almost everyone connected to the home care industry in South Australia except the Government says it is a sector in crisis.

A three-year Employee Ombudsman probe into the sector has revealed untrained workers are being hired by government-accredited care agencies and sent into the homes of the vulnerable without basic police checks or first aid, let alone specialist training to handle quadriplegics, administer medication and perform such tasks as invasive bowel care.

Workers are routinely sent to new clients unprepared and with little information about their special needs and medical condition, leaving them just as vulnerable as those they are helping.

"The industry is poorly paid ... there's not enough effort put into the security of the carer who walks through the front door into someone's home and clients are paying agencies for a service that is not always able to be delivered because of a lack of thought in regards to the resources required to deliver that service," Employee Ombudsman Steve Brennan he said.

Dignity for Disability MLC Kelly Vincent the sector was "broke financially and in terms of structure ... it's so reactionary and crisis-driven".

"I don't think the current checks and balances are adequate," Ms Vincent said.

"It's not just about the amount of funding that goes into the services, it's the way it's allocated and the way the system is managed."

She said the National Disability Insurance Scheme being phased in over the next seven years to allow individuals and families to self-manage their care funding should drive the market to be more competitive and lift standards.

To read the full story, visit:

Call for Innovative Supported Accommodation and Respite

Mary Wooldridge, Minister for Mental Health, Women's Affairs and Community Services Media release, 7 October 2011

The Victorian Coalition Government is calling for applications for funding to establish new and innovative accommodation and respite services for people with a disability, including those with complex needs and/ or a mental illness, Community Services Minister Mary Wooldridge said today.

Funded under a $41 million election commitment, interested parties are invited to apply to provide:

• New and innovative accommodation and support services
• Flexible and innovative disability respite support and school holiday respite support

“At the last election we committed to delivering better supported accommodation options,” Ms Wooldridge said.

“One way of doing this is to increase access to services and provide greater choice, which will help improve the quality of life of Victorians with a disability, their families and carers.

“People with a disability have told us they want more choice in their living arrangements and carers are saying respite needs to be more flexible and affordable. We’re looking for new and innovative ideas that will help meet these needs.

“We are also using the opportunity to identify service providers who want to partner with the Victorian Government to apply for capital funding under the Commonwealth Government’s Supported Accommodation Innovation Fund.”

Ms Wooldridge said new school holiday respite support will be available for the 2011 summer holiday period and will give more people with a disability and their families and carers the opportunity to have a much needed break.

Submissions are due by 10 November. To download a Submission Request form, visit:

https://www.tenders.vic.gov.au/tenders/index.do;jsessionid=49C04710000AC846497D0AA7C1AC2156

For more information, phone (03) 9096 0140

New Website Shows Over $5.8 Billion Spent on Mental Health Services

Australian institute of Health and Welfare Media release, 12 October 2011

Over $5.8 billion, or $272 per Australian, was spent on mental health-related services in 2008–09, according to a new mental health services in Australia website unveiled today by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW).

The website was launched by Minister for Mental Health and Ageing, Mark Butler, as part of Mental Health Week.

AIHW Director David Kalisch said the new interactive website provided ‘a comprehensive picture of the national response to the mental health care needs of Australians’.

The website shows increasing use of all mental health-related services, including hospitalisation and other residential care, hospital-based outpatient services and community mental health care services, and consultations with both specialists and GPs. These services were funded by a combination of state and territory governments, the Australian Government and private health insurance funds.

‘The first port of call for people seeking help for a mental illness is often a GP, and there were an estimated 13.3 million mental health-related GP encounters in 2009-10,’ Mr Kalisch said.

Depression, Anxiety and Sleep disturbance were the three mental health-related problems most frequently managed by GPs in 2009–10.

Over the same period, there were 5.1 million MBS-subsidised mental health-related services provided by psychiatrists, psychologists and other allied mental health professionals to over 836,000 patients.

About 336,000 people in Australia also accessed community mental health care services in 2008–09. With each person likely to use these services more than once, there were over 6 million contacts involving clients and community mental health care practitioners. Community mental health care services are specialised public psychiatric services providing care for people affected by a mental illness.

An estimated 29 million prescriptions for mental health-related medications were dispensed in 2009–10, with around three quarters of these being subsidised by the Australian Government. Antidepressant medication accounted for nearly 60% of mental health-related prescriptions, followed by antianxiety medications (14%) and antipsychotics (12%).

Health care professionals providing mental health-related services include psychiatrists, psychologists, nurses, general practitioners and social workers. In 2008, 15,000 mental health nurses were employed in Australia, representing 6% of all nurses.

The AIHW is a major national agency set up by the Australian Government to provide reliable, regular and relevant information and statistics on Australia's health and welfare.

To view the Mental Health Services in Australia website and download the reports, visit:

http://mhsa.aihw.gov.au/home/

EVENTS

Disability Notification Project – Stakeholder Engagement Session

MFB Community Resilience will be holding a stakeholder engagement session to scope a new project called the Disability Notification Project. The aim of the project is to deliver an improved safety outcome through ensuring firefighters know when they respond to a property at which the occupant may be unable to self evacuate. It will also send an automated message to a nominated contact to advise MFB have been dispatched to the address to ensure people are reconnected to service providers, family and friends.

For this first session MFB is seeking participants who:

• Live alone
• Require transfer assistance and use a wheelchair to mobilise
• Live within the Metropolitan Fire District

MFB will meet the costs of transport to and from the session.

Bus Accessibility Test Sessions

The Department of Transport is calling on volunteers to provide feedback on the current accessibility of low floor route buses.

The Department is particularly interested in the views of people who use mobility aids, people with a vision impairment, older people and those travelling with small children in pushers and prams.

The test session is designed to gather feedback about the following:

• The ease of boarding, alighting and manoeuvring on low floor buses for wheelchair and scooter users;
• The characteristics, dimensions and manoeuvrability of mobility aids that are able to board, alight and be carried on low floor buses;
• The characteristics of interior layouts, seating plans and fittings that would enhance functionality of buses for a range of different users.

The test sessions will be conducted by the Department of Transport.

Refreshments will be served.

An attendant carer will be present during all test sessions.

National Justice Symposium

At a time when law and order is front and centre of community discussion, national leaders will come together for a discussion about what makes a humane and effective justice system at Jesuit Social Services’ National Justice Symposium on 21st and 22nd October.

The Symposium will be formally opened on Friday evening by the Hon Andrew McIntosh, Victorian Minster for Corrections and Crime Prevention, followed by the keynote address on ‘What constitutes a humane and effective justice system?’ by Frank Vincent QC.

A cross-section of sector leaders, including Government Ministers, CEOs and Judges, will take part in panel discussions on important issues around community safety and justice. Saturday’s program will be divided into four discussion panels, led by expert speakers including Professor Tony Vinson from the University of NSW, the Hon. Greg James QC, Mr Rod Wise, Deputy Commissioner Operations, Corrections Victoria and Mr Peter Murphy, CEO of Noetic Solutions. The day will conclude with a summary and call for action, facilitated by Frank Brennan SJ AO.