Page 1958 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 23 June 2021
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Clause 11 sets out the obligations of care and carer support agencies in relation to reporting. An agency must report annually on the steps they have taken to uphold the care relationship principles and the agency’s obligations. For public sector support agencies, reporting is to be included in their annual report. Funded support agencies are required to report annually. This could be, for example, in their own annual report or by publishing a statement on their website.
For secondary funded support agencies, the provision of a public report is encouraged rather than required so as to balance the reporting obligations of smaller organisations. The reporting obligations provide transparency and accountability and are crucial to realising the objectives of the bill.
Clause 14 provides a regulation-making power and clause 16 creates a new carers recognition regulation. Schedule 1 creates the carers recognition regulation 21, which sets out the information required from care and carer support agencies to meet reporting obligations under section 11(3) of the act. The new regulation is taken to be notified on the same day as the act; however, the regulation does not commence until the commencement of schedule 1 of the act.
I note that a number of organisations have said they appreciate that there will be an implementation period for the bill and, as part of that, they welcome as much guidance and clarification as to their responsibilities as possible, as nobody wants to get this wrong.
In developing this bill I heard from many carers, and the word that I heard most in all of my conversations was “invisible”. Carers consistently told me that they felt invisible, never heard, not respected—just nothing. This must change. It is no secret that I grew up in a family that cared. For most of my childhood, all of my adolescence and part of my adulthood, my parents were foster parents. We welcomed hundreds of children and young people into our home—sometimes for a short time, sometimes for a long time. My parents also cared for my maternal grandparents in their later years, and this gave them more insights into the challenges of caring.
In putting together this bill I had many conversations with my mum and dad, asking what they had seen change over the decades that they had been advocating for carers. When I sent my mum a text asking if she and Dad could give me a few paragraphs to add to my introduction speech on what this bill would have meant to them when they were caring, the response was that it always goes back to, “You’re only carers, you don’t have a brain, you don’t know what’s best, or you are invisible”. Later, they actually wrote a whole paragraph rather than just a text message:
Being a carer changes you forever. It adds to your life experience, but it is not easy. It changes your priorities and how you see life for both you and the person you are caring for. You put the person you are caring for first and put aside many of your own desires and wishes so that you can ensure the best possible options and outcomes for the person you are caring for. Sometimes that also means you put your life on hold 24/7 for as long as is needed. This needs to be respected by those working with both the person being cared for and their carers.
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