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General Purpose Standing Committee No. 2

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About this Item
Subjects -  Youth; Disabled; Parliamentary Committee: New South Wales: General Purpose
Speakers - Chesterfield-Evans The Hon Dr Arthur; Ryan The Hon John; Robertson The Hon Christine; Fazio The Hon Amanda; Forsythe The Hon Patricia
Business - Committee, Report


    GENERAL PURPOSE STANDING COMMITTEE NO. 2
Page: 1099


    Report: Post School Programs for Young Adults with a Disability

    Debate resumed from 10 May 2006.

    The Hon. Dr ARTHUR CHESTERFIELD-EVANS [2.51 p.m.]: Carmel Tebbutt tried to discourage this inquiry because there was no more money available for disability services, and because, if there were, it should be spent on group homes. I think she was grappling with the fact that the changes were Treasury driven. As the committee delved into the origins of and reasons for them, it appeared that Treasury was indeed the driving force. We read lofty rhetoric in the Disability Services Act, but Treasury is not willing to support it with funding.

    We have not generally acknowledged the increasing number of people with disabilities in our community resulting from the fact that we now live longer—but we must do so. Some are born with disabilities, some acquire them through brain injury or other reasons, even medical misadventure—perish the thought—and some acquire them as part of the ageing process. If everyone in our community is to enjoy a decent quality of life we must recognise the existence of two populations: the people who have disabilities and those who are lucky enough not to have them yet. Those of us who do not have them yet must look after those who do, because we could end up in that category at any time.

    It is a poor show to rely on the capriciousness of private insurance. It is up to the Government to offer our community the maximum quality of life possible. The committee found that the changes to block funding were based on budgets increasing at the same rate as inflation. However, the number of people with disabilities is increasing much faster than the rate of inflation and as a result the funding available to each individual is decreasing. Many technological aids are being invented that can have a huge impact on quality of life and the Government must recognise that funding increases far exceeding the rate of inflation will be required to assist people with disabilities. It must bite the bullet. The Adult Training and Learning After School [ATLAS] and the Post-School Options [PSO] programs were replaced by the Transition to Work and Community Participation programs in an attempt to save money. It is one thing to change the name and nature of programs, that is fair enough, but if the objective is to save money, it not good enough.

    The New South Wales Council of Social Security [NCOSS] produced a budget statement listing the things it wants, including improved quality and adequacy of programs for school leavers and young people with disabilities with enhanced opportunities and appropriate and adequate supports for young people and families for skills development, ongoing learning and community involvement. It states that to maintain the standard of their services many providers have reduced the hours of service being offered, which, of course, transfers the load back to families. The committee heard abundant evidence that the services offered to people accessing the ATLAS and PSO programs had been cut. NCOSS stated that the cost of restoring those services is $22.67 million recurrent, and I believe that figure.

    I disagree with one of the inquiry's recommendations, which was that there should be a mixture of block funding and individual funding. The Australian Council for Rehabilitation of the Disabled, the lobby group representing institutions caring for people with disabilities, is keen on block funding because it believes a critical mass of money is required to provide staff and so on. On the other hand, if the money is given to individuals and an organisation does not get sufficient providers to offer programs, those individuals have the right to choose to spend the money in other ways. Having heard the evidence collected from British Columbia, I am a great believer in individual funding to ensure a fair go for people with disabilities.

    The Hon. JOHN RYAN [2.56 p.m.]: It is a pleasure to participate in this debate, in which we are taking note of the committee report on changes to post-school programs for young adults with a disability. This report was completed in August 2005, but the debate has moved on because the Government has implemented some recommendations. However, it has not dealt with some of the most critical issues the committee was seeking to address. One of the most significant changes is that the Government has required all the agencies providing post-school programs, known as community participation, to reapply through a tender process. Despite the Minister's comments in question time yesterday and in the media, the tender process has been—to the best of my knowledge—an unmitigated disaster. One of the outcomes was that 20 per cent of the service providers and hundreds of clients were found to be working with ineligible providers.

    Providers such as Sylvanvale and New Era at Sutherland, the Illawarra Disability Trust at Wollongong, St George Disability Service at Kogarah, The Ella Centre at Haberfield, WALCA at Bexley, Miroma at Vaucluse, the Fairfield Resources Centre, Response Training in Adamstown and West Gosford, the House With No Steps at Lake Macquarie, the Blue Mountains Disability Support program known as Eloura at Springwood, two sites operated by the Nepean Area Disability Organisation at St Marys and Lemongrove, Bridges Hawkesbury at Windsor, ASPECT—which is the new name of Autism New South Wales—at Hornsby, Croydon and Carlton, the Sunshine Home at Brookvale, Interaction Ltd at Castle Hill, the Housing Connection at Chatswood, Centrecare, Challenge at Tamworth and Gunnedah, On Track at Tweed Heads, the House With No Steps at Forbes, Challenge at Coffs Harbour, Bathurst Independent Living, Lambing Flat Enterprises at Young, Cooma Challenge, Griffith Post-school Options and the Griffith Centre at Albury are just some of the organisations which I found were providing services under this program when the committee did its report but which are no longer eligible to participate because they failed in the tender process or in some other fashion. Some 300 clients are now in programs from which they are being ordered to move. They are basically being frogmarched from one service to another.

    I ask members to think back to when their children were going to school, for those who are past that experience. I ask them to imagine what would have happened if they were told their child's school was to close in six weeks. That is what happened to the people who were in these programs. They were told their children would be moved on to other programs because their service provider had failed to impress in the tender process. Many of these organisations are outstanding. Many of them have long-term experience in the provision of disability programs, and they will go on providing other programs. It surprises me that they are regarded as inappropriate to provide the community participation program.

    The people whom that process affected the most are the families and clients who have had to leave services with which they were associated, or will have to leave in the future. Many of them will be leaving this week or next week. They will be leaving people they have befriended in those programs and staff with whom they have formed strong relationships. Members opposite, who rant on about WorkChoices, may be interested to learn that hundreds of staff will lose their jobs as a result of the reallocation of these programs to new service providers. Some of them will lose entitlements they have accrued under long service leave, for example. That is all gone, because they will simply be ceremoniously dumped by this Government. As I said, the people who have the biggest problem are the families of clients.

    If you are looking after a child with autism and you have settled them into a program, a certain amount of calmness finally establishes within the household. If the Government suddenly decides you have to move to another service provider because the Government no longer approves of it, this throws the family into chaos. During the last two months parents in their hundreds have told me this. When I say they have told me, they have physically rung me on my mobile phone and poured out their hearts to me.

    The Minister spoke to some people from Sylvanvale, and they cried in his presence. Finally the Minister was moved to make something of a deal for them, but frankly he has been mealy-mouthed and has used weasel words to offer the relaxation of this tender process to many families. I will refer to one of them in a moment. Many of these families are at the same time undergoing a process of assessment. The clients are being assessed as to whether they fit into one of four categories of funding bands. From next year, the people in the higher levels of funding will again receive five days a week and those who do not qualify will receive four days a week. This assessment process is causing enormous stress for families. I wish to read a letter I received just this morning. The letter was sent to my colleague in another place the honourable member for Lismore. I will not name the lady who wrote the letter, but she told of her experience as follows:

    I am exhausted by it and by my role in caring for a young man with profound multiple disabilities while holding down a demanding, high-pressure job and battling health problems of my own.

    Ever since [my son] left school in 2002, I have been required to be reassessed and to submit a new application for [his] support funding every four months.

    He gets some funding through the ATLAS/community participation scheme, and because this is inadequate to meet his needs I need to apply for interim crisis funding every four months to top it up—and this is never guaranteed.

    You can't imagine the emotional toll of this constant uncertainty. It is such an inhumane way to treat people.

    Despite the fact I am saving the State Government around $100,000 a year by keeping [my son] with me, I have to go begging, cap in hand, every four months to secure the funding to care for him.

    It is just plain wrong.

    Now, because of [his] latest clearly inaccurate assessment, we are facing a massive cut which, if implemented, will mean I will either have to quit my job and go on the Carers Pension, as there will not be enough money to pay for [his] high support needs, or else I will be faced with placing [him] in institutional care.

    Both scenarios fill me with dread and they would both negatively impact on [his] health and quality of life.

    As I said, I have yet to investigate the issue the lady is speaking about. However, the letter illustrates how many families feel every time they are subjected to change and uncertainty. Some 300 of these families across the State have been subjected to change and uncertainty as a result of the Government's tender process for community participation, which it has just implemented across the State. Having made the decision to now allow parents to elect to stay with their existing service provider under an alternative program, the Minister has failed to confirm that promise.

    Members will have heard yesterday during question time how I battled tooth and nail to get the Minister to utter the words of the promise he made in the media to the parents of children who attend the Sylvanvale disability service at Sutherland. But another service provider, which apparently was added at the last minute, the New Era Service, which is only a kilometre away, was told that it would get the same deal. The service provider has yet to receive the information in writing. Almost all the parents received phone calls from Department of Ageing, Disability and Home Care officers telling them they had to choose another service provider by Friday last week or they would be dropped out of the scheme and their funding would be cut. The parents have done that. But unfortunately the Minister, who apparently promised to allow them to undo that, has yet to tell them. So those families have endured yet another week of uncertainty and stress.

    I urge the Minister to write to all the 300 families involved to advise them of their rights. Apparently the deal given to the parents at Sylvanvale—and advertised widely on the Alan Jones program and in the St George and Sutherland Shire Leader—is that clients and their parents now have an unfettered right to elect to stay with their current service provider, they will be funded in an alternative program that is very similar to community participation, and they can stay there as long as they wish until they elect to go somewhere else. I do not believe that is a perfect solution, but it is somewhat of a solution.

    I cannot understand why the Minister is not promoting that solution, by telling the parents and advertising it widely in the media. I think I know why. The Minister wants to minimise the number of people who will take up that offer. The reason he wants to do that is that he will want to tell a committee in a few weeks time, when we question him about this, that the whole process has been an absolute success and very few parents want it to change. I know that that is not the case, and I ask the Minister to come clean and speak to these parents and tell them what their rights are.

    The Hon. CHRISTINE ROBERTSON [3.06 p.m.]: Firstly I concur with the Hon. Patricia Forsythe's comments about the wonderful people we met during the inquiry. It was an extremely intense inquiry, and we engaged in personal contact with many people who spend much of their lives dealing with very difficult situations and many workers in the system who also spend much of their lives dealing with very difficult situations. Overall, it was an inspiring inquiry.

    The Government has responded to recommendations in the report, and I am pleased that a number of these recommendations are consistent with the Government's new directions for post-school programs. I wish to speak about the deliberative meeting that was held by the committee in order to formulate its recommendations. It was an extremely intensive day and the group was very fairly chaired. Although during the inquiry there had been quite a bit of conflict between us—and I assure members there was a lot of heart in the deliberative meeting—I do not think any member of the committee felt his or her issues were not on the agenda or had not been reported in the recommendations. In all, it was a very successful committee activity.

    There was wide community agreement that the previous Adult Training, Learning and Support [ATLAS] program that supported school leavers with a disability should be reformed. The Government introduced two programs to replace ATLAS: Transition to Work and Community Participation. These programs aimed to improve access to employment, and provide certainty of longer-term support for young people with a disability not able to make that transition. Following a review of the impact of the changes on young people and families, the Minister for Disability Services directed the Department of Ageing, Disability and Home Care to implement further changes to post-school programs. Improvements to these programs will continue, reflecting the importance of the programs for more than 4,000 people currently supported by them, and for future school leavers who will enter the programs in years to come.

    First of all let me summarise the improvements to the Community Participation Program, which, in line with the emphasis of the inquiry, was treated as a priority. As a first step the Government committed an additional $6 million to ensure that all participants in the Community Participation Program could receive 18 hours of support a week. This was the first time a commitment to service hours had been made. Since then the budget has been handed down and more funding for these programs has been implemented. The Minister also announced there would be a competitive tender for community participation services. We heard the Hon. John Ryan report that some people were not pleased with the outcome of the competitive tender process. However, it was done for a lot of good reasons and during the Committee's inquiry there were lots of demands for the right to competitive tender and for tenderers to prove they could do the job better than others.

    The department then worked extensively with service users and their families, service providers and peak and advocacy bodies to develop and implement these decisions and introduce further improvements to the Community Participation Program. The tender for community participation services has been released and we now know that new services will commence on 1 July 2006 for all young people in the program. I am pleased that the changes introduced are built on wide consultation, have a strong evidence base and will increase the quality and capacity of funded services to meet the needs of people with a disability.

    Consultation and feedback sought by the department through the development of the new directions has included regular meetings of the Community Participation Stakeholder Reference Group; the release in December 2005 of our proposals for change, inviting feedback from service users and families, service providers, and peak and advocacy groups; two consultation workshops with Aboriginal people to identify barriers to access and strategies to overcome these; and discussions with other States about service development and delivery, including visits to Victoria, Western Australia, South Australia and Queensland. There were representatives of Aboriginal persons from New England North West so I know there was a relatively legitimate cross-section of Aboriginal people there.

    There are seven key features of the new and improved Community Participation Program. First, a clearer focus on services that develop everyday life skills and independence, provide learning and meaningful activities, expand friendship and support networks, and promote inclusion in local communities. This recognises that young people with disabilities, like all young people, want to continue to develop and learn as they leave school and pursue their adult lives. The program has a sharp focus on assisting them to develop the living skills they require and supporting community integration. Achieving results for young people in these areas is how the success of the new program will be measured.

    Secondly, new service types will be introduced to give young people and their families greater choice over their support options. There will be three service types or options, which will allow young people to choose between individually-focused activities and group-based activities—centre-based services with community access where young people primarily undertake services in small groups, individual community-based options where young people are helped to design their own program in community settings, and self-managed packages that will be introduced through two demonstration projects—giving young people and their families greater flexibility in the types of supports they access. There will be a much better choice than previously.

    Thirdly, funding will be individual and portable for all young people. This enables easier movement between service providers as people's needs or aspirations change over time. This was something the Committee fought very hard to achieve. Based on an assessment, young people will be able to move between the Community Participation and Transition to Work programs, allowing people in community participation to pursue employment where they are able to do so. These new service types and funding arrangements promote choice for young people, allowing them to access the available service that best meets their needs. The changes are also consistent with the first two recommendations of the inquiry.

    The fourth key feature is that all community participation service users will be able to receive at least 18 hours of support each week. This minimum requirement is now built in as a core program requirement expected of all service providers. This will provide a sustainable, long-term guarantee of three days of support each week for young people and families.

    The fifth key feature of the new Community Participation Program is that funding will be linked to a person's assessed support need. This means people with the highest support needs will receive the highest levels of funding, ensuring that everyone can receive at least 18 hours of community participation services each week, regardless of their support needs. Previously, people had a blanket amount of hours for such services. There will be four funding bands. I have not got the accurate figures for the bands but they provide for moderate support needs, higher support needs, very high support needs, and exceptionally high support needs. There was a lot of evidence during the inquiry to indicate these funding bands were essential.

    The funding bands were set after extensive reviews of existing funding data and other information, including results from the University of Wollongong's Cost and Classification Study of funding in other States. This is consistent with recommendation 9 of the inquiry. The Wollongong University study commenced in October 2005. Service data was collected for 730 service users and 17 providers across post-school and day programs. More than 29,000 hours worth of data was captured in the study, which identified four cost bands linked to a person's support needs. The university found the results were robust and could be used to inform funding decisions.

    The sixth key feature is that there will be improved access for young Aboriginal people and young people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. Historically, there has been low representation of Aboriginal people and people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds in post-school programs. The Government is committed to ensuring fair access for these eligible young people. All community participation services will be required to provide culturally appropriate services. This could mean consulting with families and communities about service needs, ensuring staff are trained in cultural appropriateness, or supporting individuals to observe cultural and religious practices.

    In addition, for the first time, the department is also requesting tenders for Aboriginal-specific services and specific services for young people from culturally diverse communities. The department will monitor the effectiveness of this new direction with clear performance measures to ensure that fair access is achieved. This comprehensive approach incorporates and goes further than recommendation 5 of the inquiry. Finally, the financial stability of individual providers will be supported through the provision of a guaranteed minimum level of funding each year. This will be based on 75 per cent of the number of service users at the beginning of the calendar year. The change is designed to allow individual service providers to invest in service improvement by giving them greater predictability and security in relation to funding. The Government is doing its utmost to give families the best value for the very large investment made each year to school leavers with a disability. These improvements to the Community Participation Program will increase choice and opportunities, deliver results for young people with disabilities, and provide sustainable supports for young people and their families into the future.

    I turn now to the Transition to Work Program. This program provides eligible school leavers with skills development and support for up to two years to enable them to make the transition to employment, wherever possible. In order to improve this program, the department commissioned and published an independent report on Transition to Employment Pilot Projects. The pilot projects ran between 2002 and 2004 and tested innovative approaches to assisting school leavers with a disability to transition to employment. These pilots will inform the finalisation of the Transition to Work Program guidelines. It is important that young people who are ready to move from the Transition to Work Program to supported and open employment have the opportunity to do so. Supported and open employment is the responsibility of the Commonwealth Government. The Commonwealth Government has been contacted to increase the number of supported places that are available.

    Many of the recommendations of the inquiry are in line with the Government's new directions for post-school programs. I am pleased that with the introduction of the new community participation services in particular a number of the recommendations in the report are addressed. The Government will continue to work towards achieving equity in this program.

    The Hon. AMANDA FAZIO [3.16 p.m.]: I followed the conduct of the inquiry by General Purpose Standing Committee No. 2 into changes to post-school programs for young adults with a disability with great interest because for a long time I have had an interest in that area. I have been concerned about the way programs that were being inquired into developed. In 1986 I worked for the Commonwealth Government and managed the introduction of the Disability Services Act in New South Wales, which, again, was a time of considerable concern within the disability sector. There were three concerns—competing concerns in some cases. One was a concern from the Commonwealth Government to ensure that we introduced outcomes-based services that provided the greatest opportunity for young people with a disability.

    The competing concerns were the concerns of parents who were worried about any change to the system of funding and to the service provision that they were used to. The third concern came from the existing service providers themselves who saw any proposed change as being an attack on the level of service they were providing. With any review of disability funding I think there is a certain degree of controversy because parents become very concerned about any changes that might interrupt or disrupt the way services are being provided.

    The representations of this report are good in that they look at the whole range of issues, they recommend flexibility in terms of the way that the funding is provided, and they look at some of the concerns that were raised by inquiry participants in relation to uncertainty and wanting to have the right to appeal against assessment decisions that they are not happy with. Overall, for a very sensitive area where it is very easy for people to whip up community concerns and to play on the fears of people who are often in situations where their ability to cope is stretched to the limit, it is very hard for families with disabled family members to have the time to manage their normal family life as well as to find the time to participate in the management of services and in reviews and inquiries of this nature.

    If one looks at the way the inquiry was structured, there were plenty of opportunities for people to have their say, including meetings with parents, consultations with people with disabilities who are service users, and ordinary public hearings comprising umbrella groups, advocacy groups and service providers. The recommendations are quite good. However, one of the contributions to the debate today merely comprised a litany of concerns that were whipped up in the local community, and that does no-one any good. There must be change in the disability area and we must ensure that the focus is on funded programs that maximise opportunities for people with a disability to participate in normal community life and work opportunities, if they are available for them, and if they have been trained properly.

    In particular, the recommendations in the report about meshing together Commonwealth and State funding programs are worthwhile. I do not understand why the State Government signed the Commonwealth-State Disability Act, which created unnecessary delineation between the role of the State and the Commonwealth in terms of providing these services. The only thing that happens with that type of strict delineation is that the people near the edges of the definitions used by the respective governments have the potential to miss out on service provision. With those few words, given the difficult area that General Purpose Standing Committee No. 2 inquired into, the report is well structured and well balanced. Anything that contributes to greater opportunities for people with a disability to manage their own affairs, to participate in the community and to have meaningful work options is worth supporting.

    The Hon. PATRICIA FORSYTHE [3.22 p.m.], in reply: I thank all honourable members who contributed to this take-note debate—the Hon. Dr Arthur Chesterfield-Evans, the Hon. John Ryan, the Hon. Christine Robertson and the Hon. Amanda Fazio. I thank, in particular, the Hon. Christine Robertson for the generous comments she made on my role as Chair in what was a difficult area to present fairly and in a balanced way for all participants and for all people with a disability. I thank also those members of the secretariat who assisted whom I did not mentioned previously, Steven Reynolds, the director, Madeleine Foley, and Tanya Bosch.

    In summary, I acknowledge that the Government has indicated that it will take on board many of the recommendations of the committee and for that I am grateful. However, as we heard from the Hon. John Ryan, there is some distance to go. We are dealing not only with people with a disability but with people who are individuals with individual needs. It is about trying to find a balance between providing services in the traditional manner where there are services in place that give rise to block funding and individual funding. On the one hand, we have the need for diversity and choice to assist people and, on the other hand, the need for consistency in how the system is applied and the Hon. John Ryan was making the point that there is still a lack of consistency.

    Sometimes the Government makes a rod for its own back in the way in which it seeks to interpret some of its own legislation and programs. The Hon. John Ryan gave an example of one particular service, which suggests that there are still problems in the way in which the adult education and community programs for people with a disability are being delivered in this State. However, having said that, I acknowledge that the Government has recognised that there are problems and that the cutbacks in funding and limit in choice are not assisting anybody. Indeed, this Minister has been prepared to look at this with his eyes open.

    Next week we will have an opportunity during the estimates committees to test whether the Government is making progress in this regard, but if this report and changes to post-school programs for young people with a disability contribute in even a small way to moving forward on providing support for people with a disability over the course of their life beyond their school age, we will have made a valuable contribution. Again I thank my colleagues for their support in working together to reach positive outcomes. I look forward to the Government implementing other recommendations in the report.

    Motion agreed to.


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