The Australian Federation of Disability Organisations (AFDO) welcomes the Report by the Hon. Alan Robertson SC from the independent review into issues surrounding the appalling death of Ms Ann-Marie Smith in April this year.
We acknowledge that the Government has already taken some action to strengthen systems and processes to better support NDIS participants most at-risk of abuse, violence, neglect and exploitation. We now call on Government to urgently implement all ten recommendations in the “Robertson Report” to prevent the re-occurrence of such abuse and neglect that led to Ms Smith’s death from happening to another person with disability.
The Robertson Report included 10 recommendations, including:
- The NDIS Commission should act to identify earlier those people with disability who are vulnerable to harm or neglect;
- No vulnerable NDIS participant should have a sole carer providing services in the participant’s own home;
- For each vulnerable NDIS participant, there should be a specific person with overall responsibility for that participant’s safety and wellbeing;
- Consideration should be given to the Commission establishing its own equivalent to State and Territory based Community Visitor Schemes to provide for individual face-to-face contact with vulnerable NDIS participants;
- the NDIS Commission should conduct occasional visits to assess the safety and wellbeing of selected individual NDIS participants, whether or not a complaint has been made or a “reportable incident” notified.
Below is a video (with captions) of the Hon. Alan Robertson SC reading the Summary and Recommendations from his Report. The full report is available below:
More information is available on the NDIS Quality & Safeguards Commission website.
