Submission No 214
INQUIRY INTO IMPLEMENTATION OF THE NATIONAL DISABILITY INSURANCE SCHEME AND THE PROVISION OF DISABILITY SERVICES IN NEW SOUTH WALES
Name: Mr Daniel Ryan Date Received: 8 August 2018
7.8.2018
Portfolio Committee 2 Dear Committee Members, I am the brother of a young man with severe cognitive and behavioural disabilities. My name and this letter may be posted minus any contact information.
When NSW first proposed the privatisation of our state’s disability sector, families who had people in ADHC group homes were worried - most especially the families of people who were difficult to manage. We raised grave concerns. We were continually assured that nothing would change. That was not true. We were lied to. Important things have changed and are continuing to change which was what we all feared when private enterprise and the so called not for profit organisations took over.
The new non-government providers have a completely different mind set to a government run organisation. Everything is about money and not about the people who are supposedly being cared for. Rosters are changing, the way staff are treated by their new “overlords” is changing, flexibility and caring are decreasing. Something does seem to be increasing though - paperwork. Things that were previously in place for the health and welfare of our family members now seem to need to be redone with more visits to doctors to get even more paperwork in place before we can just continue doing what needs to be done. It seems that staff have to spend more time dotting “i”s and crossing ‘t’s than actually working with the people they are there to help.
If families really want true choice and control for their loved one, and want to change something they have to fight these new providers every step of the way. This is very time consuming and exhausting.
The new non government providers also seem to like everything uniform. Their view is that whatever is good policy for one group home (probably the cheapest one) must be good for every other one as well - regardless of the makeup of the clients in each particular house. That shouldn’t be how it works. The houses should adapt to the choice of the people who call it home not the service provider. (Within reason of course – with evidence based data.)
Please return the Government of NSW to an active participation in caring for the disabled in our state, particularly for our most vulnerable. Disability shouldn’t be thrown into a “marketplace”. Surely it’s not about dollars and cents, it’s about care and compassion.
Yours Sincerely, Daniel Ryan