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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 10 Hansard (5 September) . . Page.. 3178 ..

MS REILLY (continuing):

Those people who live in Disability Services houses have no tenure. They have no rights of residence. They have no right to the security of having these places as their home. They can be moved from house to house without discussion and they can be moved from bedroom to bedroom. They have no contract and no lease arrangements. Is this good management for the people in supported accommodation and does this insecurity mean good health outcomes? What would be the quality of life of these people? What would be the quality of life of most people in the ACT if from night to night they did not know where they were going to sleep? Most people know where their homes are; they know where they will be sleeping on any one night. But if you live in a Disability Services home there is some doubt about it. There seems to be some expectation within Disability Services that you do not need to discuss with these people what their home life might be like.

People living in other public housing or in private rental accommodation have contracts or leases that people in Disability Services houses do not have. There may be head leases between ACT Housing and Disability Services, but this does not seem to bring in the residents of these Disability Services houses. It is almost as though they are clients but they are not residents, and they cannot consider this as their home because they do not know for how long any particular address will be their home. If the new CSHA is signed next year, a code of consumer practice for Housing Trust residents will be formed. I hope the people who live in Disability Services houses will have the opportunity to be included in this code of consumer practice. One hopes also that whenever the new Residential Tenancies Act sees the light of day these people can be included in some way. They need some tenure and they need some legal redress if they have to move or leave those houses.

There is a model practice in Australia that could have been considered. I have recently worked in the Commonwealth aged care program, where residents in Commonwealth-funded aged care facilities have rights of residence and there is an agreed charter of residents' rights and responsibilities. ACT Disability Services could have looked at this and considered whether they wished to take on that model. The residents in Commonwealth-funded aged care facilities have rights to residence and they have rights whereby they have a contract between the individual and the home in which they live. This means as well that they cannot be moved from bed to bed within that facility without discussion and without the agreement of the resident. There are also limits to how many moves can be made in any one year, even with agreement. You cannot say that someone agrees to move from one bedroom to another bedroom one week and then the following week move them around again. People know where they are going to be sleeping; they know where they live.

People cannot be moved from one nursing home or hostel to another nursing home or hostel without the agreement of that individual. There are contracts or tenancy agreements between the individual and the nursing home in which they live. Any change to that place of residence has to be agreed by the residents themselves. This gives the people in Commonwealth-funded nursing homes and hostels some security of tenure and some rights, but there seems to be a failure within ACT Disability Services to ensure that people have the same rights. If, for some reason, a person living in a Commonwealth-funded hostel or nursing home wishes to terminate the agreement or

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