TRANSCRIPT
FAMILYANDCOMMUNITYDEVELOPMENTCOMMITTEE
InquiryintosocialinclusionandVictorianswithadisability
Melbourne— 3 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
Witnesses
MsG. Callister, secretary,
MsK. Haire, deputy secretary, community and executive services group, and
MrA. Rogers, deputy secretary, service design and implementation group, and director of housing, Department of Human Services.
TheCHAIR— Good morning.I very much appreciate you coming before the committee this morning. On behalf of the committee, I would like to welcome Gill Callister, Katy Haire and Arthur Rogers from the Department of Human Services. I remind witnesses that all evidence taken by this committee is taken under the provisions of the Parliamentary Committees Act 2003, attracts parliamentary privilege and is protected from judicial review. Any comments made outside the precincts of the hearing are not protected by parliamentary privilege. All evidence given today is being recorded. Witnesses will be provided with proof versions of the transcript. Please note that these proceedings are not being broadcast. I now call on Gill to give a brief presentation of no more than 15minutes. I will then open it up to members of the committee to ask questions. On behalf of the committee, I thank you for and very much appreciate you being with us today.
MsCALLISTER— Thank you, Chair. I will start with a short presentation. It will relate to the slide pack in the folders we have just provided to you. I will take you through that slide pack. There are some other resources that we thought may also be of use to the committee in your deliberations. There is a copy of the Victorian state disability plan and some other information that you may wish to refer to.
I would like to start with a simple truth, which is that people with a disability have the same ambitions and talents as any other members of our community. People with a disability also have the same rights as other Victorians to participate in community life and to pursue their personal goals and aspirations. Beyond having the same rights as other Victorians to be included, people with a disability have consistently told us they want to be included in community life. They want to live, work and socialise in the same way as everyone else, and importantly, just as everyone does, people with a disability have told us they need support and skills— from education and training to health care and safe and reliable transport— to really access and participate in community life.
But despite having the same rights, skills and aspirations as other Victorians, we know that people with a disability are more likely to live in poverty. They are more likely to have fewer educational qualifications, to be unemployed and to experience discrimination and sometimes violence and abuse in their lives. While we have achieved much in recent years to support people with a disability to be included in the community, there is more to do. Today I will present evidence to this inquiry on behalf of the Department of Human Services centred on three themes. On slide2 I list those themes.
In the first of those we will look at Victoria’s performance in relation to the social inclusion of people with a disability, and we will look at our progress to date and highlight areas for continued focus. The second theme looks at the way the Department of Human Services supports the social inclusion of people with a disability: how the department works to support people directly through both service provision, funding and policy settings as well as with the funded sector and other parts of government. In theme3 we will look at how we intend to make future advances, taking into account the challenges and opportunities that exist today.
Moving on, to set the scene it is important to recognise that Victoria has a long and proud history of supporting people with a disability to access and participate in community life. In late 2012 the Victorian state disability plan was released. Its development was led by the Department of Human Services, and it provides a wholeofgovernment, wholeofcommunity plan for making life better for people with a disability and their families and carers. The state plan was the subject of extensive public consultation, from which we gleaned insight into the issues that matter for people with a disability, and we will talk more about the plan shortly.
It is also important to understand that the plan is derived from the Disability Act of 2006 which, beyond setting the framework for the plan, also focuses on enabling people with a disability to individually plan their supports so that they are flexible and tailored to their wishes and needs. It requires government departments and statutory bodies to establish disability action plans which focus on reducing barriers and promoting inclusion. It enshrined in legislation the Victorian Disability Advisory Council. It established the role of the Disability Services Commissioner to independently deal with complaints about Victorian disability services. It protected the rights of people with a disability, subject to restrictive interventions, through the establishment of the role of the senior practitioner. It also precipitated the establishment of the Office for Disability, which sits within the Department of Human Services and provides leadership and support across the Victorian government to improve the lives of people with a disability.
The act paved the way forward, and we are now in the strong position where we have structures in place, through the state plan, to effect mainstream change and give rise to its intent, because in the words of prominent disability activist Stella Young, living with disability is nothing compared to living with exclusion. The state government does not act alone; the commonwealth, local governments and the community sector also have responsibilities in relation to social inclusion of people with a disability.
I turn to the first theme, of Victoria’s performance with respect to social inclusion. Slide5 shows that about 18per cent of the total Victorian population have a disability, with 2.5per cent having a profound disability. This is a steady increase from the 1998 estimates, and it is consistent with the national average. The Department of Human Services not just focuses on people with a profound disability but also seeks to influence attitudes within the total population. Like everyone, people with disabilities must have their basic needs met before they can engage in social or economic activity, and specialist disability supports play a key part in this.
Victoria compares favourably with other states and territories. In 2012 Victoria provided specialist disability supports to the highest number of clients— 63168people— compared with any other state or territory in Australia. This is not just because Victoria has a large population. In 2012 we also serviced a high percentage of the population eligible for services, matched only by South Australia, Tasmania and the ACT.
But people with a disability do not always require specialist support directly from government. Often their needs are also being met by families and friends and other service systems, like home and community care and mental health.
On slide7, turning our attention to the economic participation, it is worth noting that on labour force participation, Victoria— the dark blue column— is slightly above the Australian average. However, in 2012 the labour force participation rate for all Victorians with a disability was 53.9per cent, significantly lower than for Victorians without a disability, at a high 82.2per cent. That tells us there is a high proportion of people with a disability who want to work who are currently excluded from the job market.
Turning to social participation, it is difficult to measure; however, there has been consultation by the ABS with disability groups and people with a disability about how to measure this. On these measures, including the ones referenced below, Victoria is above the Australian average. In 2012 the percentage of all Victorians with a disability who had facetoface contact with someone from outside their family was 76.3per cent— the blue columns on your graph.
A similar trend is apparent in Victorians with a disability who had travelled to a social activity at least once in the previous two weeks— which is the orange columns— at 93.8per cent. However, while an important part of the picture, this is not the full view of the levels of social inclusion of the people with a disability.
So what do these things tell us? While Victoria compares favourably with other states and territories in the provision of specialist disability supports, meeting demand remains a constant challenge. This will change as we move towards a national disability insurance scheme, which I will talk about shortly.
Victoria’s economic participation for people with a disability is slightly above the national average, but there is a significant gap between people with and people without a disability remains. Women with Disabilities Victoria highlight the importance of this, stating that social and economic advantages of being employed are well recorded, such as security, selfdetermination, financial resources and a sense of purpose. Yet women with disabilities encounter innumerable barriers to obtaining paid employment.
Victoria is above the national average on social participation measures. However, getting clearer measures for social inclusion will help us focus effort in this important area across government, the community sector and the community as a whole.
Turning to how we as a department show our commitment to social inclusion, we partner with other areas of government and the community to work across a spectrum of activities, ranging from direct service provision to raising awareness in the broader community. As already mentioned, one of the key ways we actively support meaningful social inclusion is through the implementation of the Victorian state disability plan, which aims to build a more accessible and welcoming Victorian community where people with a disability are able to fulfil their potential in all aspects of life and have the same opportunities to participate as everybody else.
To do this, the plan sets out four interconnected goals, which you see on the slide, to realise the longterm changes that Victoria is working towards. The plan outlines the government’s approach to reducing barriers faced by people in accessing education, employment, justice, transport and public spaces within our community. It has people with a disability at its centre, and it works across all aspects of everyday life to build a more accessible and welcoming Victoria. Critically, it has been signed up to by all government departments.
There are 141government actions in the plan to spread across all government departments, and these actions have led and will lead to real change. Just one of those actions relates to the Transition to Employment program, which supports young people with a disability who are interested in pursuing paid employment but not yet ready to move to work or to be supported by a commonwealth disability employment service, so it is a great way to bridge a gap toward economic participation.
We monitor the effectiveness of the plan and are also responsible for coordinating a quarterly interdepartmental committee on disability to keep the plan on track.
Over recent years there has been much discussion about disability in the media and the community more generally, and much of this has centred on the emerging national disability insurance scheme, or as we refer to it the NDIS.
The NDIS aims to transform disability services into a nowaitlist, universal entitlement, federal social insurance model and to support people with a disability to pursue education, employment and other opportunities to actively participate in our community. Since the scheme’s inception the Victorian government has played a leading role in the development and implementation of the NDIS.
The Productivity Commission articulated in its report that all Australians would be potential beneficiaries of the NDIS through the first tier of services, while the second tier is targeted at all people with or affected by disability. The third tier is targeted at people with support needs that would otherwise not be reasonably met without funding and are not more appropriately met by other systems.
While the NDIS focuses on meeting the support needs of people with a disability, it also focuses on reducing the lifetime costs of disability by giving people the support they need to participate and contribute both socially and economically. This principle is reflected in the NDIS act, which enshrines in law that each participant’s plan should advance their inclusion and participation in the community.
We are seven months into a trial of the scheme in the Barwon area, which is giving us the insight that we need to revise and modify the NDIS before statewide implementation, and it means that we are well positioned in Victoria to ensure that the fully formed scheme is effective alongside the implementation of the state plan.
Even before the NDIS I believe Victoria has been at the forefront of the empowerment of people with a disability. Selfdirected approaches in this state have placed people with a disability at the centre in establishing their support. People— to the extent that they are able to— plan, design and implement the services and supports they need to realise the life that they want. A key mechanism for enabling this flexible approach is through individual support packages.
Approximately 1400people will receive an individual support package in Victoria this year. We have sought to shift control into the hands of people with a disability wherever possible. When I think of how this approach impacts directly, I think of the example of Lisa, who, thanks to her ISP, is able to access and participate in a whole range of community activities, including recreation, technology, cooking and a range of other subjects at Kangan TAFE at Broadmeadows. She is a busy 42yearold woman who has a physical disability, and through her ISP she has directly employed her carers. As a result, Lisa has had greater choice and control over her supports and been able to do things like take holidays interstate.
More recently we have aimed to shift to more individualised approaches to respite provision also. As the name suggests, respite aims to provide parents and carers of people with a disability with a break, but we have moved markedly from this simply meaning that a person goes into a facility for an evening. There are many great examples of how innovative respite approaches promote social inclusion.
Charles is a 13yearold boy with a disability requiring high levels of support and constant supervision. It has caused significant strain on his mum, who also cares for two younger halfsiblings under five. He was matched with Kerrie, who is a volunteer, who is able to meet him at school each Monday and spend a couple of hours with him exploring the local area. He likes to go to the library, go on public transport and spend time at the playground at the local park. She has been able to do this with him, giving him individual time to do the activities he enjoys, and his mother is able to spend time with his younger siblings.
Moving to slide 14, the department also takes a facilitative approach to much service delivery, working to influence how other organisations can improve social inclusion. This is important because a significant proportion of the department’s funding goes to external organisations. The DHS standards represent a single set of service quality measures for funded service providers and departmentmanaged services. The standards are summarised as empowerment, access and engagement, wellbeing and participation.
In particular the standard of participation allows us to assess whether funded agencies are committed to social inclusion and to support them to move in that direction. The department also supports a range of targeted programs that work specifically with mainstream services, other areas of government, disability services and people with a disability to facilitate a more socially inclusive Victoria. The community building program is our key program targeted at social inclusion for a disability. It is located in local government and is implemented by 26rural access, 31metro access and 5deaf access projects, a total of 62projects across the state, with an investment of $6.95million this financial year.
The Victorian government is also working with the community sector to transform the human services system to better meet the needs of all vulnerable Victorians, including those with disabilities, and Services Connect is the centrepiece of this transformation. It is a new integrated model of service provision designed to connect people with the right support, address the whole range of a person’s or family’s needs and help people build the capabilities to improve their lives.
I have tried to highlight how the department is actively working at many levels within this theme. We have formed, facilitated and leveraged many partnerships with people with a disability and their families, with government, the sector and the community to improve social inclusion for Victorians with a disability. We can reflect on the examples and see that these initiatives are working to provide more options and empower people to fully participate within their communities, but there remains much more to be done.