SUB.100.02645_01_0001
Audio file 221122 1504.mp3
Transcript
This is a submission from Lotus Place in Rockhampton. Lotus Place provides services to forgotten Australians. There are people who experienced abuse as children in care. Many of the participants are both aged and have disabilities.
In Rockhampton, the major issue was that medical services are limited. There are no doctors who are bulk billing in the town and the gap fee is prohibitive, so they feel that there are poor standards and poor access. The same is true of aged care services. Aged care services are limited and if you have a disability but are on an aged care package rather than NDIS package, there is no choice and the fees that people are charging for basics like cleaning, are prohibitive.
So therefore there is effectively no choice for these people. Regarding Centrelink and payments, the online requirements, and systems for using the MyGov Portal, do not make sense to this cohort, and it is too complex and Centrelink staff do not do training around these that equipment to adequately allow them to learn those systems. They were further disadvantaged because they didn’t have their own IT equipment.
With regard to the provision of services, due to their childhood, many are illiterate or semiliterate and they do not understand professional language that medical staff, Ndis staff or aged care staff use and therefore they feel further embarrassed and disadvantaged with access to services. Other issues are that there are no specialists available in Rockhampton and they don’t have access to proper health care. Some have equipment that has been supplied, but there is nobody to do repairs to the equipment like scooters and wheelchairs, electric wheelchairs. There are excessive waiting times up to 18 months for repairs to occur and they often can not afford the repairs on their pensions.
Recommendations:
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There should be Aged Care and NDIS navigators who can unpack the complexity of systems for them and assist them with paperwork to access services and support.
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There should be choice regarding providers of service in terms of aged care or NDIS as currently there is a lack of choice.
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They want a culture in the public sector of understanding about their particular disadvantage, and for people willing go the extra mile in terms of explaining the systems to them to make their access to services easier.
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They want repairs to their equipment to be timely
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The waiting times for both medical intervention and services with locals and professionals to be more appropriate.
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The culture from police was biased towards indigenous people, some had been followed while shopping and there needs to be training around police behaviours.
SUB.100.02645_01_0002
One of the participants, a younger person with disability, lives in aged care because there’s no ability to get appropriate services to him, but he complains that vitamin D injections are compulsory in the aged care facility whether he wants them or not. This seems to be an infringement of his human rights about choice.
The deaf cohort in this group felt that they were further disadvantage during COVID with mask wearing. They could not understand people, and they experienced discrimination when not wearing masks or asking people not to wear masks so that they could understand what people were saying. They also said access to hearing aids was on a 5 year rotational need and this often left them with no hearing ability if aids were not working, lost or damaged.