‘Tick and flick’ culture in chronically short-staffed disability watchdog office
Chronic staff shortages plague the agency tasked with overseeing disability care, a whistleblower claims, and there are bound to more cases like the Ann Marie Smith horror.
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The national disability watchdog office in South Australia is plagued by “chronic under- staffing”, resulting in a “tick and flick” assessment of reportable incidents, it is claimed.
A whistleblower and the Community and Public Sector Union claim NDIS Commission staff are managing up to 1000 cases each, including potential sexual abuse.
Concerns over inadequate staffing at the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission come as former Federal Court judge Alan Robertson begins online hearings in Adelaide on Monday and Tuesday into the death of disability neglect victim Annie Smith.
The NDIS Commission is an independent agency established to regulate NDIS providers and improve the quality and safety of NDIS services.
A former commission employee says quality monitoring of service providers under the current workload and the reliance on providers to self-report incidents was “mind-boggling” and “untenable”.
“There are bound to be more Ann Marie Smiths out there and far more who are being abused physically, financially, and sexually, that are being missed,” the whistleblower said.
“The amount of information coming in is so much and there is so few staff that they just don’t have enough time to properly assess what’s really going on out there.”
The former staffer said there were up to five officers each processing 600 to 1000 open cases of reportable incidents under the NDIS Act, including potential physical and sexual abuse and neglect.
Ms Smith, 54, died in April in “disgusting and degrading” circumstances.
She was living with cerebral palsy and was under the care of registered NDIS provider Integrity Care (SA) Ltd.
Latest figures show more than 4500 reportable incidents have even made by SA and NSW providers in the first year of the commission’s operation. The ex-employee said this figure had doubled.
“Without the resources in place to identify risk and gather intelligence, and look deeper into cases and providers, there is so much that ends up becoming a tick and flick process,” said the whistleblower, who did not want to be named as they continue to work in the sector.
The Community and Public Sector Union has warned of “significant staffing and workload issues”, particularly for complaints staff, at the commission’s SA office, in a letter dated July 9 to SA union members.
The union’s deputy national president Beth Vincent-Pietsch said in a statement “chronic under staffing” had been an experience at the commission, like many commonwealth agencies and departments.
She said cuts to the 21,000 Australian public servant level cap “had been felt at the NDIS Commission”. An NDIS Commission spokesman said it received a large number of incident reports and that staffing levels were determined by Federal Government budget processes.
A spokesman for NDIS Minister Stuart Robert said an initial budget of $209m over four years had been allocated to the NDIS Commission in 2018 with an additional $11.8m after the disability royal commission and COVID-19.
“The government will continue to review and adjust the NDIS Commission’s resourcing to support it in its important role of protecting people with disability,” he said.
SA opposition disability spokeswoman Nat Cook said the State Government must strengthen its oversight of disability service providers and vulnerable South Australians through unannounced spot checks via the Community Visitor Scheme.
Human Services Minister Michelle Lensink said the government supported the community visitor scheme and was awaiting pending recommendations from the taskforce’s final report, which was due to be delivered on July 31.
“In its interim report, the safeguarding taskforce acknowledged the community visitor scheme was a ‘complex matter that should not be rushed’,” Ms Lensink said.