Attending 14; Apologies 1
The meeting was opened by the Vice-Chairman, Dee Ellem at 11.15 am.. She welcomed all and advised that Bob Jones was progressing well after surgery.We look forward to seeing him at our next meeting.
We noted with sadness the news of the passing of Paul’s son Logan.
Minutes of the previous meeting
The minutes of the 28 January meeting had been previously circulated.
It was moved and seconded that they were correct as read. Anita/ Moira.
Business arising from previous minutes
During the previous meeting, we agreed to submit comments to ADHC on the proposed State Disability Inclusion Bill. Two comments were emailed to the instrumentality. These covered the following
1 "The role of the Community Visitor should be strengthened to protect individual people with intellectual disability from the possibility of receiving inadequate service. This is particularly necessary where there is no family member to protect the interests of an individual whose intelligence has been assessed as below normal and who would be regarded as having diminished responsibility for decisions."
The proposed Act is appropriate for a person whose only disability is physical. It seems to downplay the needs of people with intellectual disability.
2 "A specific item of the Bill should make reference to the National Standards for Disability Services - December 2013. (www.dss.gov.au)"
The proposed Act makes strong reference to Employment Screening, but little mention of the need for suitable qualifications. The National Standards has strong reference to this aspect.
Further, the Standards impact fundamentally on most of the broader material in the Draft, and its inclusion as a basic tenet of the Bill would seem of critical importance.
We should not expect a reply.
Treasurers Report
John tabled an up to date report on our financial situation. We have a current credit balance of $432.13.
Report approved and accepted John/Ros
Correspondence
As usual, our correspondence consisted of emails. All have been filed and dealt with
General Business
We had no guest speaker for this meeting. Instead, we had a useful group discussion in which we were able to explore the impact and difficulties we expect in the near future as the NDIS and Person Centred funding is applied to our families.
It is quite apparent that we have little reliable information on the effects we, as elderly parents of people with high support requirements, can expect from the new system.
It would seem that we should be able to gain some knowledge from the experiences of similarly placed family members who have already been subject to the changes which are occurring in the Hunter district.
It was therefore agreed that we should move to obtain specific details for ourselves. We believe that the information we require must be on file as recent experiences inside the NDIS hierarchy, and we should organise ourselves to have these experiences outlined to us from a high ranking NDIS official.
In achieving this information, we agreed that we should combine to clearly voice our concerns. As an initial step, we will be contacting Jill Hall MP, the member for Shortland, and who has previously been helpful to us, to see if she can facilitate a meeting for us. We are hopeful for this, but otherwise we will make direct representation to NDIS. All our effort will be to arrange a suitable meeting for the occasion of our next monthly meeting on 25 March. We are allowing for the possibility of having the meeting in Belmont or Charlestown if necessary.
Bruce Conn moved that we should allow for the cost of a bus hire if necessary for this exercise. Seconded Allan
The progress on this will be distributed as soon as available.
The meeting closed at 12.45
NEXT MEETING 25 March 2014
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