Long term supported accommodation: letters to the editor

The Sydney Morning Herald's letters to the editor pages have featured these two letters about the provision of government funded, supported long term accommodation for people with disabilities in NSW, in recent days:

February 11, 2009

One place found in group home. Thousands still wait

Your article about the young woman with mental illness who has been allocated supervised accommodation is a happy one for her and her family ("Obeid says he doesn't want credit", February 9).

Perhaps parent-carers and families of people with mental illness and intellectual disabilities who need 24-hour supervised accommodation can contact the Herald so a list may be compiled of the urgent and chronic need for such accommodation. In NSW in the past two years only 51 of the more than 16,800 people who need supervised accommodation and are living with elderly and ageing parents were accommodated in a group home.

This problem has been severely neglected for more than 30 years and is the single most pressing need that carers of people with disabilities want addressed. Parents are dying without knowing where, how and by whom the people they love will be cared for.

I urge the Herald to follow this issue and champion the people who are enervated by the nature of what they do and have done for decades; people who no longer have, or never had, the capacity to demonstrate and engage in letter-writing campaigns. Only by continued coverage of this issue will anything change. It needs more than sporadic coverage that occurs when a family pushed to the edge is forced to make their family member with a disability homeless, because they can no longer provide the 24-hour care they need.

For a government to be so derelict that families are forced to take this damaging step is immoral.

Mary Lou Carter
Drummoyne



February 14, 2009

Government finds more places for the disabled

I would like to clarify some of the points made by Mary Lou Carter (Letters, February 11).

The Department of Ageing, Disability and Home Care is very aware of the need for more supported accommodation for people with a disability and their families, as shown by the commitment to increase and improve services in Stronger Together, the NSW Government's $1.3 billion, 10-year plan for disability services.
In its first five years, 990 accommodation places will have been established, increasing the number of supported accommodation places by 20 per cent.

Since May 2006, 315 more people have received accommodation support services, including places for people with a disability who are no longer able to live in their own home, young people leaving the care of the Minister for Community Services and people leaving the criminal justice system.

The state and federal governments are jointly providing more accommodation places over the next four years for people with a disability who have an older carer.

More than 650 places will be established. Capital funding of $33.68 million has been committed to this project.

The department has recently released the Innovative Accommodation Framework, which provides a new direction for the range and type of supported accommodation delivered. This has come about by us listening to people with a disability and their families, and taking on board their views.

We are developing a policy to give families and carers a clear way to register their immediate and long-term needs for accommodation support, which will assist in planning for growth in disability services.

These initiatives clearly demonstrate the State Government's commitment to improve services for people with a disability.

Brendan O'Reilly
Director-General,
Department of Ageing, Disability and Home Care

• The Innovative Accommodation Framework document does not appear to have been posted to the Department of Ageing, Disability and Home Care website as yet.