Posted September 26, 2022
This week the disability royal commission heard tales of abuse and neglect from people with disabilities in youth detention and adult prisons. One woman described being constantly dropped while being moved in and out of her wheelchair and said she was denied physiotherapy to slow the progression of muscular dystrophy. An Indigenous man said he was denied his antidepressants and asthma puffer. A hearing-impaired man said he didn’t have an Auslan interpreter for weeks.
Posted September 20, 2022
The report confirmed that understanding: compared with the total population of NSW, people with disability were more than twice as likely to be victims of reported violence and domestic violence offences.
Posted September 2, 2022
w crackdown on providers taking advantage of the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) has been predicted to catch many fraudsters after a Queensland woman was jailed and another charged over alleged fraud offences.
Posted August 19, 2022
This report draws on de-identified stories that starkly illustrate the impact of the system failures on adults who are at-risk. It identifies gaps and failures in the current framework and makes seven recommendations to improve Victoria’s safeguarding laws and practices for all at-risk adults. The recommendations aim to ensure that we do not lose sight … Continued
Posted July 26, 2022
It won’t surprise many readers that people live with multiple disabilities. But when a person requests funds for a support related to a disability not listed on the access request form or in the NDIS system, the NDIS can be unnecessarily difficult.
Posted June 20, 2022
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.
Posted June 6, 2022
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.
Posted June 3, 2022
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.
Posted January 18, 2022
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.
Posted December 3, 2021
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?
Posted November 15, 2021
The moment Britney was placed under that conservatorship, she was considered disabled by the law, allowing her to be dehumanised and commodified.
Posted November 12, 2021
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.
Posted October 22, 2021
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.
Posted October 19, 2021
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.
Posted October 19, 2021
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.
