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Legislative Council - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, Second Session (54-2)
2021-11-17 Daily Xml
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Disability Housing

The Hon. N.J. CENTOFANTI (15:10): My question is to the—

Members interjecting:

The PRESIDENT: Order! I would like to hear the Hon. Dr Centofanti. Start again, please.

The Hon. N.J. CENTOFANTI: My question is to the Minister for Human Services regarding disabilities. Can the minister please update the council on how the Marshall Liberal government has cleaned up Labor's mess in the disability accommodation space and also supported—

Members interjecting:

The PRESIDENT: Order!

The Hon. N.J. CENTOFANTI: —South Australians with disabilities since—

Members interjecting:

The PRESIDENT: Order!

The Hon. N.J. CENTOFANTI: —the last election?

Members interjecting:

The PRESIDENT: Order! I am not—

Members interjecting:

The PRESIDENT: Order! I am not sure the minister heard the whole of that question, but I will ask her to continue.

Members interjecting:

The PRESIDENT: Order! If the minister would like the question in full again, we will have it.

The Hon. J.M.A. LENSINK (Minister for Human Services) (15:11): I might have an inclination of the contents of the question.

The PRESIDENT: Proceed.

The Hon. J.M.A. LENSINK: Yes. I do note that the honourable member hit a nerve when she mentioned those key words 'cleaning up Labor's mess'.

Members interjecting:

The Hon. J.M.A. LENSINK: Well, let me begin.

The Hon. I.K. Hunter interjecting:

The PRESIDENT: The Hon. Mr Hunter will cease!

Members interjecting:

The PRESIDENT: Order!

The Hon. J.M.A. LENSINK: In terms of the accommodation services provided by the South Australian government, this is one of the very pleasing areas in which there has been a huge amount of reform that has taken place to make sure that the service is providing the highest quality and best service possible. The team, in that respect, have identified deficits in clinical oversight, in compliance, in ensuring that there is appropriate leadership over service practice, engaging clients to provide them with a voice and ensuring that they are asked about their services. I have already spoken several times in this chamber over some time about the critical incident reporting that I demanded be improved.

We have done a restructure for the liaison staff. We have provided capacity building officers to empower our clients to make their own choice, and quality and safeguarding officers to improve practices within the service. We have implemented a quality and safeguarding framework, including a 'zero tolerance to abuse to people with disability' policy, and that has included extensive training and education programs to frontline disability workers. We have undertaken announced and unannounced internal audit site visits of homes, in addition to visits from the Community Visitor Scheme, and broadened the definition of 'critical client incidents' to ensure that I am notified of any incidents that have been reported to the police.

These initiatives have meant that staff, families and clients are much more likely to report issues now than they have been in the past. The phrase that families have certainly used is that in the past they used to pick their battles because they were concerned that if they raised a number of issues they might be seen as vexatious, even though those were genuine complaints, and that is I think quite disturbing because it speaks to a culture of tolerating that people with disabilities don't need to be treated with the same respect as everybody else.

Following these major service reforms, further work has occurred over the past 12 months to embed these improvements in our accommodation service spaces, including: the establishment of a service agreement between clients and accommodation services; consistent training and development for all staff so they understand all of their responsibilities; improved reporting through anonymous complaints options, which includes for staff, clients and their families; a review of all restrictive practices in use with appropriate documentation orders in place; and the CCTV pilots to explore the use of visual reporting and monitoring in the homes of people in our accommodation services.

We certainly have had very good feedback across the service from clients, their families and staff that these improvements have meant that we are providing much higher quality services and we look forward to continuous improvement continuing in this service.

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