NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission
Submission 74 - Supplementary Submission
Quality and Safeguards are still refusing to do anything about my complaint and have closed the complaint, which means now I have to ask them to reconsider the complaint. They keep insisting that the Victorian government says disability support isn’t an essential service, despite the Victorian government saying it is an essential service. They also now say as I only used M 2 hours a fortnight it’s not essential, when there is no NDIS law or rule that says registration requirements don’t apply if you only use the provider for 2 hours a fortnight. And now they are saying that M provided continuity of support by cancelling my supports because if they were not cancelled me or the worker might have caught Covid and then I wouldn’t have had my supports or something like that. Which is an argument that defeats logic. And then after these stupid arguments that have nothing to do with the laws and rules that are written down for registered providers to follow, they say what M did doesn’t warrant a fine. Quality and Safeguards have had 8000 complaints and they apparently think only 1 incident warranted a fine. It was a $12,000 fine to Integrity Care for not reporting the death of Ann Marie Smith. $12,000 is a low fine, as they can fine up to $250,000 and maybe even $500,000 (sorry I read the fines section of the law a while ago). And Ann Marie Smith was abused, neglected, and died because of this but they only fined the provider for not reporting her death. It’s outrageous. And that is the only incident that they have issued a fine for. So they apparently don’t think anything warrants a fine.
The person who investigated - from Victoria - kept saying “we don’t issue fines” like they’ve been told by the managers not to issue fines.
Dealing with Quality and Safeguards has been time consuming, frustrating, vexing, and very upsetting. They appear not to be trained in dealing with disabled people who need to be treated sensitively. I don’t know how they would treat someone with an intellectual disability, if they treat me in a way that is so upsetting to me.
I haven’t had any conversations with M about the complaint since I lodged a complaint with them. The CEO was replaced and the new CEO restarted face to face supports and continued them throughout the Victorian second lockdown, so at least they have changed the policy.
In my area M has been short staffed though so I haven’t been able to have a M support
worker more than a couple of times since face time face support started up again. So I really feel like I have missed out on important mental health support over the last 7 months. And because I am a psychosocial participant it’s actually important to me that I have mental health support along with my other support workers who I do exercise or bushwalking etc with.