Community Visitors are volunteers who play a vital role in safeguarding the rights of people with disability and fostering their inclusion in the community. This is an annual report that identifies a range of issues critical to the safety, treatment, care and human rights ofVictorians who, due to their disabilities, require 24-hour care in state- regulated or managed services.
Community Visitors find incidents on abuse, assaults and violence, particularly resident-on-resident and patient-on-patient, as well as people still failing to access or benefit from the NDIS. They continue to be frustrated in their work with facilities denying access to incident reports, and failure of regulation in the SRS sector, resulting in the troubling neglect of residents.
The challenges presented by the pandemic and the ensuing lockdowns, required service provision to pivot to remote contact by phone or video when prevented from visiting disability group homes, mental health units and Supported Residential Services (SRS) in person. Facilities could only be attended in person for 65 per cent of the year due to lockdowns.
Download report (off-site)- Topics:
- Housing, Safeguards and workforce quality
- Author:
- Office of the Public Advocate
- Date published:
- Thu 18th Nov, 2021