As a disability rights lawyer who represents people with disabilities and their families every day, I know that there is often a lot of confusion and fear around guardianship laws; especially about why they exist. This article is designed to fill you in on how these laws came to be and what role they have in a modern Australia that acknowledges the human rights of people with disability.
The AFP has said the four people arrested have ties to organised crime gangs. Three of the four had posed as disability service providers. Money was allegedly being claimed from NDIS participants for services that were never received.
The taskforce, which is a partnership between the National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIA), the Australian Federal Police and Services Australia, alleges the trio were operating as disability support providers and were fraudulently claiming payments for services not actually received.
Joshua and Nicole’s case highlights a problem in the NDIS system where recipients of services end up taking on legal liability in the case of a dispute over payment. Jo Evans, a senior solicitor in the Consumer Law team at Legal Aid NSW, says she’s more and more concerned about the number of cases she’s seeing of NDIS recipients being sued or facing action from debt collectors over unpaid invoices.
We all enjoy legal rights, including the right to live free from discrimination. But how easy is it to use the law to uphold those rights? Could ‘chatbots’, a form of artificial intelligence technology, help make the legal system more accessible for people living with disabilities?
The moment Britney was placed under that conservatorship, she was considered disabled by the law, allowing her to be dehumanised and commodified.
You understand this is a sensitive topic but as a provider of disability supports, you know further punishing people in prison will disproportionately disadvantage people you work with.
The report said that police awareness of disability was an issue, where police could not identify nor did they understand the impacts of disability, adding that police rarely provided people with disabilities with a support person. It is not just alleged offenders with disabilities who are impacted, but also witnesses or victims of those with disabilities.
There hasn’t been nearly enough work done to fix the criminal justice system for people with disability, according to an advocate who knows first-hand how traumatic prison can be for those in the disability community.
This report finds some police responses to people with disability are inadequate and can be ‘damaging’ to their well-being. Many people with disability who end up in a life-long cycle of disadvantage and incarceration come into contact with police due to their disadvantaged circumstances and their inability to access effective social services. The evidence presented in the report indicates justice systems across Australia in many cases enable, rather than prevent, violence, abuse, neglect and exploitation of people with disability.
Disability support is a matter of significant public and community interest, with employers operating in a highly regulated, accountable and sensitive environment. The type of care and conduct of employees towards those in their care has come under closer scrutiny in recent years as community expectations have shifted to zero tolerance of any form of abuse perpetrated against supported persons.
A Victorian man has been sentenced to jail for rorting the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) of more than $300,000 by billing the provider for fake lawn mowing services.
This guide has been created to help you put in place some safeguards to ensure the person with disability you care for is properly provided for, if something were to happen to you. It outlines actions carers can take now to ensure safeguards are in place, should the time come when they are no longer able to care for the person with disability.
A teenage boy found guilty of murdering a Central Victorian man with a disability in his home in July 2018 will spend at least the next six years in jail.
Police allege the syndicate skimmed NDIS funding from disabled users of the scheme — providing inflated invoices to the NDIS for rebates.