Disability

UnitedFuture supports the intentions and direction of the NZ Disability Strategy, but believes that there is an unacceptable gap between policy and practise in many service areas.

Audit

It is UnitedFuture Policy to:

  • Ensure standards are customised and focused on the quality of life not just compliance to systems. Clients should be central to the audit process and supporting friends and family should be consulted.
  • Compliance and risk management audits could be simplified and streamlined into an online format that is available to all funders’ needing this assurance to avoid duplication. These should be updated regularly and inexpensively. On-site audits could then focus on service development and client satisfaction.
  • An independent review of current audit and monitoring provisions be carried out.

Advocacy & Complaints

It is UnitedFuture Policy to:

  • Establish Community-based advocacy services to ensure that every disabled person and their family have a case manager who ensures that clients are given every support they are entitled to and want.
  • Provide advocacy training for brokers, clients and their families who wish to advocate for themselves.
  • In the current absence of accessible advocacy services, develop clear protocols between Disability services and related services like health, mental health, education, income support so that applications for assistance are more streamlined.
  • Support the development of “family governance groups” to oversee life-long care arrangements for individuals with disabilities.

Accountability and Collaboration

It is UnitedFuture Policy to:

  • Establish and fund a Disability Commission to be accountable for the full implementation of the disability Strategy.
  • More accountability is needed to track where the money from unfilled carer hours goes and is spent.
  • The sector needs to be client-driven not provider-driven. Better collaboration between what clients want and what services are available will require a change in funding and contracting. Where possible the client should determine the contract.

Housing

UnitedFuture supports the following standards:

  • The residents served should assist in the selection and location of the home.
  • They should decide who they want to live with, have a voice in staff selection and help to decorate and furnish their home.
  • Agencies should hire staff whose personal orientation, commitment, and attributes are targeted towards helping people make a home for themselves.
  • Programming, treatment, and related practices are either kept out of the home setting, or if necessary blended carefully into the home-life so they do not disturb the home setting.
  • The home should be close to work, family, recreation and convenient to other interests of the people who live there.
  • Intimacy, sharing, personal ownership and possessions should be encouraged.
  • The house is at all times, legally and otherwise the home of the residents, and not the staff or the agency.

UnitedFuture supports home ownership for people with disabilities through rent-to buy and shared equity mechanisms and the use of State Housing stock for this purpose.

Workforce

Society should not just be judged by how it treats its most vulnerable members, but also by how it treats those who support and care for them.

It is UnitedFuture Policy to:

  • Ensure wage rates are included as part of all government contracts with providers; the starting rate should be $18/hr.
  • Introduce a “Caregivers Allowance” for those currently providing unpaid support.
  • Ensure that appropriate respite care is available in every region.
  • Intensify workforce planning so that greater certainty is gained around issues of:
    • Scopes of practise
    • Qualifications and Training
    • Assistance for voluntary agencies (like RDA) to train volunteers
    • Fund regular evaluations and up-dates of training content by the Industry Training Organisation, including input from clients.
  • Ensure that ongoing staff training is part of government contracts.
  • Develop compulsory content for all participants in Teacher Education regarding teaching students with disabilities

Funding

It is UnitedFuture Policy to:

  • Develop individualised packages of support.
  • Increase the flexibility between household management funds and personal care funds.
  • Extend contract times to allow sufficient time for planning and service development in a sustainable way.
  • Increase Ongoing and Reviewable Resourcing Schemes (ORRS) funding to schools by 10% and ensure that it is not pruned if a student makes academic progress but remains disabled.
  • Allow bulk funding for services separate from benefit income.
  • Create a separate funding stream for workforce including wages so that wage increases can be tagged separately from general operations funding to Providers.
  • Establish a health levy (or National Insurance Scheme) to provide a designated fund to address the disparity between trauma-based (ACC) and non-trauma based impairment.