Community Visitors, under the Disability Act 2006, within the Office of the Public Advocate (OPA), visit government and non-government group homes throughout Victoria. Yet, their specific reports on group homes are not available to the residents and their families from the OPA, not even under “Freedom of Information (FOI)”.

As the OPA is not subject to FOI! So here we have a pseudo government department, the OPA, responsible for monitoring the care of vulnerable people, and they are not obligated to show their findings to the very residents of the house they are visiting.

As we (LISA) have said many times… The residents of group homes have few reasonable rights. In group homes where the Department of Human Services (DHS) is the direct care service provider, the residents are specifically denied residential tenancy rights by this all powerful government department, or individualised funding, so they can choose their service provider.

If the residents of DHS group homes had residential tenancy rights and individualised funding, they could choose their service provider, and have an agreed quality of life service contract, where they could change contractors if not satisfied.