Legislative Council - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, Second Session (54-2)
2021-06-08 Daily Xml

Contents

Disability Services

The Hon. I. PNEVMATIKOS (14:57): Further supplementary: how will this app assist those who have intellectual disability or cognitive incapacity in terms of downloading an app? What benefit will it be for them?

The Hon. J.M.A. LENSINK (Minister for Human Services) (14:58): I thank the honourable member for her supplementary question. I did mention easy English, which is a way of assisting people who may have some sort of cognitive impairment to access information in those terms. Certainly, people themselves can nominate. We have a lot of projects involved with increasing the capacity of people with intellectual disability to be their own advocates.

I'm not sure what the intent of the honourable member's question is. I'm hoping that she is not falling into the trap that some people in the community do which is to not assume that people who have capacity are able to advocate for themselves. I am sure she is not going to that space. But I think we are very much in the space where we are continuing to provide tools for people so that they can make their own decisions.

This is in that space. People will be able to either make those decisions themselves and access it themselves directly, or they may ask a family or a guardian to assist them or indeed a staff member. I think there is a range of elements to it, and if the honourable member has some particular conceptual design issues that she would like to provide to us, then we would certainly welcome that.