Government Direct Care Services are Fire Proof
Mother blocked by VCAT (Victoria)

The best place for family members with a disability, is to living with their family.

Despite advances in medical science, parents do not live forever, or are able to provide care for ever.

At some point, parents have to make that dreadful decision of relinquishing care of their vulnerable family member to “paid strangers” - as Michael Kendrick says.

Having reluctantly made the decision, caring parents naturally look for every avenue to monitor their family member’s quality of life.

In most supported accommodation group homes, these are a number of avenues which can assist parents to ascertain the level and quality of care being provided behind those closed doors. Unfortunately, many are not made available to parents for bureaucratic and so called privacy reasons. Progress notes are the most obvious avenue, if you can get access to these.

As these were blocked from this mother by the government direct service provider, she took the matter to the “Victorian Civil & Administrative Tribunal (VCAT)”, where she was, again, blocked from access to her family member’s “Progress Notes” on the grounds she would use them to scrutinise the government’s service provision.