What your local MP can do now about Deadly Disability Discrimination

The Advocacy Team at NSW Council for Intellectual Disability is calling for community follow up action to last month's Parliamentary Forum on the Deadly Cost of Disability Discrimination in the NSW health service for people with intellectual disability:

Michael Sullivan (Chair NSW CID), Fiona McKenzie
(Vice Chair NSW CID) and NSW Minister for Disability
Services, Hon Ray Williams

We thank both the Minister for Disability Services, Hon Ray Williams, and the Shadow Minister for Disability Services, Hon Sophie Cotsis, for both speaking at the Forum.

We have told all NSW MPs:

• Almost 40% of people with intellectual disability are dying from preventable deaths in NSW
• People with intellectual disability are dying on average 27 years younger than the general population
• Ignorance, inadequate training and discrimination within our health services are key reasons this is happening

Now we have an urgent request for our MPs: 

The NSW Government’s Ageing, Disability and Home Care (ADHC) agency runs specialist health care services. These services help people with intellectual disability get the specialist health services they need. However instead of maintaining and expanding these services, the NSW Government is slowly closing them down.

Next year ADHC itself will close down and the money ADHC uses to fund these services will go to the NDIS.

We believe NSW Health should take responsibility for funding these services from next year, but so far Health Minister Brad Hazzard has been silent on this issue. The health outcomes are already bad for many people with intellectual disability. Closing down these services will make them worse. We need a commitment from all MPs that they will strongly advocate for NSW Health to maintain and expand these ADHC specialist health services.

Please help us keep up the pressure and take the following actions: 

• Phone, email and arrange to meet your local MP, tell them about the unacceptable high number of preventable deaths for people with intellectual disability, and ask them to support the maintenance and expansion of these important ADHC specialist health services.

• Phone and email the Minister for Health Hon Brad Hazzard and the Shadow Minister for Health Hon Walt Secord and ask for their commitment to the ongoing funding of the maintenance and expansion of these ADHC specialist health services.

You can find a guide to emailing and phoning MPs and all their contact details in this blog about the parliamentary forum. 

If you need help in preparing for your meeting with your local MP we can run a workshop for you and your family, friends and colleagues either face to face or remotely. Contact us at advocacy@nswcid.org.au

We will have the videos from the Parliamentary Forum available to view shortly. In the meantime we ask you to contact your local MPs and help us end Deadly Disability Discrimination.