NDIS Quality and Safeguarding Framework – Monitoring and oversight discussion
The NDIS is looking at the best ways to respond to incidents and deal with issues that cannot be resolved between people with disabilities and providers. A key issue is whether there is a case for establishing a body with an independent oversight function to provide an additional level of assurance.
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7 comments on NDIS Quality and Safeguarding Framework – Monitoring and oversight discussion
There should and needs to be an independent oversight body for the NDIS, to ensure that issues that can and will arise between people with disabilities and providers be addressed by an independent authority, such as the Disabilties Services Commission which will allow either party or parties further access to resolution that is considered fair and unbaised.
Decisions made need also have a right of appeal by persons with disabilities, their families, guardians or carers.
This independent oversight body will then provide persons with disability and their families, guardians or carers an addition level of assurance that the rights of all parties are addressed fairly.
Note – The Disabilities Service Commission/er is presently funded by the Govt. Therefore, I don’t believe they are independent
I believe that there should be an Independent Body oversight as that would be without possible corruption. Due to internal corruption allegations we have to come to establishing hopefully a neutral and an excellent idea of NDIS.
That’s what I believe any way
I like th idea of an independent oversight body. Definitely the NDIA or DSS cannot be an effective independent oversight. But it needs to be a body that the government listens to and respects and cannot interfere with (thinking about the recent Gillian Trigg business now!). They should be able to investigate something on behalf of a person, help with conciliation perhaps but also enforce an agreement or a recommendation that they make. The problem at the moment is that a recommendation can be made by an independent body but there is no enforcement that the service provider has to make the change they recommend. They need to oversee not just the service providers actions but the actions of the agency as well
Maybe an Ombudsman?
An independent oversight body should be notified whenever a pwd who doesn’t have strong informal supports has a clash with a service provider. It is absolutely essential that pwd in situations like this are supported. We are not in the NDIS area yet but were dealing with a service provider which does most of it’s work in NDISland. We had a very reasonable clash of opinions with our State funding supplier which was eventually worked out to the benefit of the pwd but which took a lot of negotiation for the funding supplier to understand the pwd’s perspective and very reasonable reasoning. During the journey the service provider decided to weigh in, not by listening and representing the pwd, but by threatening to take the person’s case to the Guardianship Tribunal to try to have the person’s decision making capacity overturned. It turned out that this was a favourite habit of the service provider’s staffmember when faced with any individual who denied them absolute power. There must be help for pwd who are being subjected to this sort of coercive behaviour. People who work with pwd can be very scary when they’re scary.
There should be an independent body that monitors, investigates and logs incidents. They need to have specialise investigative skills. The Community Visitor Scheme needs to be extended to be able to access all participants, service providers, individual operators, community buildings and worksites.
This will help prevent neglect and abuse and ensure all providers of service are accountable.
This will also help with knowledge to improve services, how to better handle some incidents, prevent incidents occurring and improve safety.
A register should be kept, so as to see if a provider (any provider) has a history of incidents, accidents or abuse.