Ageing, Disability and Home Care NSW - Complaints About Service Provision

Complaints About Service Provision

In 2004 under a special report to the NSW Parliament, the New South Wales Ombudsman raised concerns about the way services to children and young people with disability were being provided in NSW. The Ombudsman found that for families seeking support to care for children with disabilities, there was lack of clarity about how to access support and that the service system was fragmented and was characterised by poor coordination of support. A subsequent progress report in 2006 highlighted that while progress had been made to improve systems to support the provision of disability services, there had been no evaluation of the longer term impacts of the reforms on families requiring those services. In response to these reports, the Iemma government released Stronger Together, a 10-year plan to improve and expand services to people with disability and their families. The first five years were funded through an investment of A$1.3 billion and set out plans to increase capacity of the disability service system by 40 per cent. A subsequent four-year plan, released in February 2007 entitled Better Together, focused on improving ‘universal’ and ‘adapted’ services: such as childcare; school; before and after school care; and vacation care.

Between May and August 2010, the NSW Ombudsman consulted with over 300 parents and carers of children with disabilities in order to report against progress at the mid-way point of Stronger Together. A change in government delayed the release of the report. In its assessment of making access to disability services simple, in June 2011 the Ombudsman reported that:

Families told us that in their experience many health practitioners, social workers, and even some ADHC staff, lack knowledge about the specialist disability service system.

....that their calls to ADHC to seek assistance had not been returned, or there had been extensive delays before they received a call back. This included people who had reapplied for ADHC support after previously receiving some assistance. Other families said that they had received a swift response after contacting ADHC, including a home visit and assessment, but had heard nothing afterwards. Some parents and carers told us that they believed that they were on a waiting list for support, but when they contacted ADHC, found out that there was no record of their contact or they had not been added to the relevant waiting list.

...the work has been slow to date, and it is not yet clear whether the actions will address the problems raised by families.