A little boy has died aged three, a few days ago in Perth (9NEWS) , after he opened the rear door of the Kia carnival his mother was driving and fell out, he was then run over by the same car and died. Bystanders heard the mother screaming in agony when the police had arrived and she had carried the little boy to the grandmas house in the same street and tried to revive him. It is excruciating to hear of this. This is the reality of vulnerable children needing safety and protective measures. Small children need this extra protection and children and even adult children of ours need extra protection for safety as they are unaware of dangers and we have to protect them, providers are also mandated to protect them in disabilities yet do the minimal if any measures to carry that out.
Yet when I have tried at times to tell support workers to lock their doors when they take my disability son out some have said no its ok I have it on automatic lock. I always say no but you should still put the manual kiddilock on the door always on. Some have said it is restrictive practices – it is like saying let the kids cross the road without hold their hand because you want them to have that freedom. No I insist to the support workers it is no longer restrictive practices and you can call the NDIS and you might have the automatic lock on but when you turn it off when you park he can still jump out of the car before you get out as he sits in the back seat also for safety. I have to be scrupulous, parents have to be with their special needs kids. The support workers seem unaware of just how urgent it is. I don’t want my son falling out or getting out and being hit by a truck as happened a few years ago when an ADHIC organisation failed to tell the young women worker that the little boy escapes from seat belts and car doors and they both died on the pacific highway because he never had a proper restraint seat belt on he needed and the organisation knew he needed but did not tell her. I have had workers get angry when I insist on a kiddilock. Tough luck. Organizations must be made accountable when they fail to bring proper health and safety. A bystander commenting in the news article on this tragedy of the little boy said small children need to have proper restraints when they are in a car. How much more vulnerable children who have disabilities and behaviours of running away or out of cars.
https://www.9news.com.au/.../f10512dc-294e-4c82-843b
Not listening to what is needed in disabilities for those most vulnerable or even the workers the government fails to care. Organizations in disabilities themselves fail to care for those they are being paid to care for so that parents have to be extra scrupulous regarding these organisations and to hold them to account for how they fail to protect or make safety measures with regards to these vulnerable children and adult family members in disabilities – we must hold all providers to account. We must hold the government and NDIS to account for proper health and safety in disabilities houses and programs so that our vulnerable children are protected.
The Australian government’s response to the Royal commission findings was largely described as lacklustre and as the ABC News said the government has not committed to a number of the most contentious recommendations. The government failed to commit to a Disability Rights Act (of course why should those with disabilities have human rights? Even animals have rights why not a person with disabilities?) and the development of a complaints’ mechanism in disabilities needs more investigation the government says – never mind the thousands of cases of abuse serious abuse a year which is ignored and barely acknowledged or even punished by the NDIS quality commission who get paid for doing nothing.
While parents brokenhearted their children have been attacked or killed in a providers care or because of the provider, then come to the NDIS with their situation and find nothing happens give up in despair of trying to get rights and justice for their child. It seems that only if you take the provider to court then maybe something will happen. They need to sue the provider which is the only way to get justice for sure. Sue for damages or criminal charges or both.
Thank God for the law as it is the only means of fighting for your human rights or those of your vulnerable child so we should use that as much as possible. Then again it is still difficult unless you have hard evidence to prove your child was attacked. Which is done by having cctv cameras for that evidence, but cameras are not made mandatory in disabilities so evidence fails in court without the cameras. Again, the NDIS says the providers are allowed to have cameras but it is not mandatory. How convenient. If you have a lot of money you can sue the provider for causing trauma to yourself and child for allowing that harm to occur and then there is health and safety laws which come into play but seem weak in New South Wales.
From a recent article (La Trobe University 2023) it was noted that in Victoria when health and safety fail to prosecute for harms and deaths in disabilities to workers or the vulnerable disability person , the unions will prosecute the provider or organization for failing to protect and keep safe the person who was harmed – even the disability person harmed in care by a worker. The unions will take up the case. Not here in NSW though it seems all power to prosecute has been taken away.
HEALTH AND SAFETY in disabilities also covers the disability person and not just the workers – both can be injured due to physical attacks but it is more common for prosecution of a provider to only occur when a worker is hurt by a disability person who is aggressive then a disability person who is vulnerable being hurt by an aggressive angry ‘support’ worker.
This difference apparently is in part due to the regulators leaving those vulnerable disability persons harmed in care as invisible and not addressing what happened to them. The NDIS quality commission (which is low quality in their response) is meant to do something about providers who harm those they are supposed to care for – yet this has been let lie and even so the Health and Safety laws are also there to protect workers and ‘other’ or those the workers work with this includes a disability person.
The Health and Safety laws are stringent yet an article put out by Research and Practise in Intellectual Developmental Disabilities (Hough, Bigby and Marsh, La Trobe University, 2023) notes that over a 20 year period, in a sector that employs hundreds of thousands of works and supports even more clients there have been only 27 cases of prosecution or enforceable actions.
The article also notes that across the nation of Australia and across all sectors there have been low rates of work health and safety prosecutions. Most prosecutions have been when a worker has been hurt and not when a disability person has been hurt. This is not right both are equally important and both are covered by the Health and Safety Act (Safe Work Australia 2019).
The article notes that there is an apparent reluctance of work health and safety regulators to take enforcement action when crimes are committed against people with disabilities compared to workers making these crimes invisible. What are they afraid of or do they just not care? Cannot be bothered – those with disabilities have the right to be protected and to have justice when someone hurts them just as much as the workers or any other person.
When a person is harmed whether they are the worker or the disability person the provider organization is looked at as whether they put enough safeguards in to prevent any of these incidents happening including when it happens to the worker (think when they do not put enough support workers on the handle the numbers of disability persons they are looking after). The devil is in the details, as any minor neglect of information or details about a disability person and how they should be protected can lead to the worst outcomes.
Think for instance of those like Merna who drowned in a residential care bath, simply because the organization, Afford, did not give a USB to the workers with the information about her – yet even then there was nothing on the USB as the organization neglected to write up the notes properly, blame their lax and uncaring system but also blame the workers who should have known better, as a normal rule than to leave a girl unsupervised in the bath who has a disability regardless of if they knew she had seizures or not. Oh that’s right workers are not trained, or educated in this field. They can enter disabilities with no qualifications something that also must change or more vulnerable persons will be harmed and die. Remember a childcare worker must do at least two years tafe or uni. Little details lead to big consequences and even death.
If people were trained and educated properly in disabilities and organizations learnt health and safety properly and not just about how much money they could make out of disabilities business then these deaths would not occur. Again the little boy Alex who died when he ran from a respite house even though the organization had been told he runs away. They still did not put locks on the doors or windows and the worker was asleep, and the little boy ran out and was hit by a train. Parents never get over these things happening and to their especially vulnerable child. There are oh so many other stories when have heard in the news over the past few years where deaths have occurred or harms because of an organization neglecting the health and safety in the small details but deadly details, just simply forgot and never followed up. We parents have to be scrupulous in making sure a provider does what we say. We are the ones who will suffer as well as our vulnerable child if anything goes wrong. The providers don’t care. We need to realize that, most of the time they are pretending to care but it is about the money they make from our needy children and that is all they care about. They do not even care about their workers.
The providers are meant to provide health and safety measures but they are failing to do so and our vulnerable children are the ones who suffer, and not only them but the workers who are also not being protected properly.
The article also notes that more overt acts of violence have been the subject of prosecutions under general criminal law. Anne Marie Smiths support worker went to prison as did a boy from Afford who took photos of those he tormented and caught by police on his own camera pics he put up on facebook while showing off he was caught out. Only because it was on camera and was hard evidence.
They say that in the past general expectations of disability services were often low (Productivity Commission 2011) and the regulators of Health and Safety may have the same low expectations in other words not expecting much out of disability providers – in providing health and safety measures. Well they need to start stepping up and making providers do the right thing – these are human lives they are involved with and the most vulnerable in society. How dare they leave it as unimportant? Writers of the article state
“Some criminal failures to provide healthy and safe environments for people with disabilities have been made invisible by the choices made by the regulators” (2023)
Maybe the regulators should be sacked and get someone who actually cares what happens to those in disabilities who expect a higher standard from providers. What about shutting down providers who do not provide proper health and safety standards? Don’t let them keep doing the wrong things or neglect to do anything to protect our vulnerable children. We need cctv cameras for a start to capture any assaults and neglect and find out the truth when incidents occur. Why should criminal behaviour be allowed in disabilities? The NDIS wants pay top dollar to providers why not expect them to have top standards of care? What about higher standards of workers some who have done university degrees to help others to learn about disabilities or at the least social welfare degrees, what about learning about the different disorders of disability persons? So complex yet they are given the least of workers who often know nothing of disorders in disabilities. There should be a standard of education and a standard of character that is able to help those who are most vulnerable not just babysit with no regard or care and no understanding of those they are working with!
The article notes that service providers can reduce the risk of harm to workers and clients if their quality and safety management systems are based on an authentic commitment to work health and safety and wide in scope.
Providers must address four types of risk the article notes – those in relation to each person they support (our disability children), each staff member, the physical environment, including equipment used, and the organisation’s practices. “Of all the parties involved in disability service provision, the provider carries the greatest legal risk and the most extensive responsibility” (La Trobe 2023) All of problems need to be addressed in real time not just left in the records. There must be dynamic responses to risks and implemented and updated as required – especially when suddenly there is a new worker who does not know the person they are looking after or the potential risks they should protect him or her from. It is noted that from the cases some of the workers and providers should have been punished for their crimes that involved single cause cases where there were major lapses in choices and actions occurring.
“There should be greater enforcement of the law in such cases and perhaps disability advocacy organisations could become as assertive as unions in their advocacy for prosecutions in appropriate cases”
WE need more prosecutions in disabilities particularly of the organizations that allow harm to continually occur – they are not protecting our children enough – the laws need to be stronger against providers neglect and outright assaults being allowed in care on the vulnerable. In other cases it has been noted there is a combination of circumstances that led to the harm or death of a disability person, and the courts have held that it is an organization and not individual employees who are to blame. Of course it is easier to distance yourself from any blame in an organization. However, perhaps the managers or CEOs should still go to prison as they are the top of the decision making and they are being paid for it. Murder is murder, manslaughter is manslaughter and assault is assault – why should they get away with it if it happens in disabilities? They should not.
The government only taking up 13 of 172 recommendations by the Royal Commission investigation into disabilities show a scant regard for those who lives are on the line by being a disability person especially at the mercy of carers who may show no mercy. This is a true discrimination by the Australian government – they have made our children second class citizens or untouchables are we living in India – where there are no human rights for women children and even less for disabilities persons? No this is not a third world country and yet the government persists in ignoring the need for protection for the vulnerable in society protections from harm and death – preferring to look to making money out of our children’s needs instead of making sure they have the best workers and the best care, providers often provider substandard care and allow the assaults and harms accidental or not to the ones they say they care for - desperate families put up with this when they should not have to. This situation must change and the laws surrounding care in disabilities. Sign my petition for mandatory cameras in disabilities to give a higher level of protection and safety to our vulnerable children in care and programs: change.org/disabilitycameras
Privacy is not the issue but safety is. The article noted that health and safety puts safety before and supersedes perceived human rights (e.g. putting kiddilock on the car door to stop a vulnerable person falling out of the car is put ahead of their freedom from restraint and is allowed now after deaths of disability children falling out) - we need cameras for that extra layer of safety from harm in care and disability programs and even the police rely on cameras they wear to protect themselves and for evidence of harm for the courts and in solving any crimes at all.
All the best
Anndrea x

#disabilitylivesmatteroz