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disability, mental health and
families:
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Charter for National Action
1. Supports for people with
disabilities, mental illnesses and their families around
Australia are in a parlous state. There are inadequate
resources, inflexible service models, and excessive bureaucracy
in an out-of-date service system.
Supports are still
organized around programs and bureaucracies, not around people
with
disabilities and illnesses and their families. Federal and state
governments are full of rhetoric about treating consumers and
their families as partners, but this rhetoric is not reflected
in practice.
The
gap between rhetoric and reality is huge.
2.
Individualised
planning and funding arrangements
have emerged internationally in response to these inadequacies
but have yet to be introduced by federal and state governments
in Australia in a serious way with a real commitment to
empowering consumers and their families. Australia lags well
behind innovative developments in individualised support
arrangements of the kind now being introduced in the UK and
North America.
3. Federal and state governments still confine
families, friends, and social networks to
the periphery
of
support arrangements, and fall short of integrating these
networks with consumer self-determination at the centre of the
service system. Family-based and peer group innovations are not
encouraged or adequately supported.
There is an acute need for
adequate in-home supports that meet the needs of individuals and
whole families, flexible responsive respite, and adequate
out-of-home care.
4.
Employment supports have yet to be personalised
to seriously meet the needs of individuals with disabilities and
mental illnesses who are capable of participation in the
workforce. Supported accommodation and independent living
options lag far behind demand. Personalised school education
options, in mainstream or specialist facilities, remain woefully
inadequate across the country.
5. Urgent action is needed in
the lead-up to the next federal election in 2007 to
overhaul the
Commonwealth-State Disability Agreement
to:
a. Provide adequate
legislative
recognition
of and commitment to support people with disabilities and mental
illnesses and their families, including legislative prescription
of minimum entitlements to consumers over their life-cycle or
illness-cycle, and minimum entitlements to support for
families.
b. Introduce
legislated
waiting time benchmarks
for core services, and
legal liability to the state for breaches of the benchmarks,
including:
i.
A four week maximum wait
for early childhood assessments;
ii.
A six week maximum wait
for early childhood intervention programs;
iii. A
six month maximum wait for emergency/urgent supported
accommodation.
c. Introduce rigorous
accountability mechanisms
to make government departments and service agencies accountable
to people with disabilities and their families, including an
independent Human Services Ombudsman in the commonwealth and all
states, independent processes of appeal and review concerning
departmental decisions, a duty of disclosure to recipients of
individual support packages on the financial administration of
packages, and a legislated right for recipients of individual
support packages to choose their own financial budget-holder and
intermediary.
d. Support the establishment of a
one-stop-shop Information Services,
independent of governments, to provide access information,
comparative service quality data, and comparative price data on
support services, accommodation services, respite services,
health services and practitioners.
e. Require the tabling of an annual
report in commonwealth and state parliaments on
progress in
overhauling the day to day operation
of the support system to:
i. remove ideological assumptions which
pre-determine what people with disabilities, illnesses and their
families may choose as their living, educational and support
arrangements;
ii. ensure person-centred transferability of information to
eliminate the need for multiple assessments and program
duplication; and
iii. ensure the effective participation of people with
disabilities and their families as partners in the planning,
design and delivery of supports.
6.
Introduce a
Respite Entitlement
assigned directly to families or their agents in the form of
a respite service voucher, adjusted with a
difficulty-in-caring rating, giving 6 weeks of respite per
year to all primary caregivers. The Respite Entitlement
should be used to purchase in-home respite or facility-based
respite according to the preference of the family.
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Comments
on the Charter are welcome and should be sent to Vern Hughes by
email
or on 0425 722 890.
Become involved:
click here to participate.
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©
Centre for Civil Society 2007 |
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Charter for National Action
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