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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 11 Hansard (26 September) . . Page.. 3274 ..

MR WOOD (continuing):

Centralised service access arrangements which provide a system gateway and information services will also be implemented. This is based on the local area coordinator concept and arrangements that successfully operate in Western Australia, Queensland, Victoria, Tasmania and the Northern Territory. Disability ACT will take a lead role in the provision of access services in the first instance.

Next month I will be establishing a disability housing working group, comprising representatives of government, peak disability organisations and people with disabilities, to further investigate appropriate housing and tenancy models and funding options for people with disabilities.

We also appreciate that there are issues that need to be addressed in relation to the disability services workforce. To this end, I will establish a working group, including government, non-government and union representatives, and people with disabilities, to develop a disability workforce strategy. The strategy will address issues such as staff recruitment, selection and retention, gaps in skills, workforce planning and human resource strategies.

In recognition of the needs of people with disabilities who are leaving school, we have expanded the post-school options program which commenced in 2000-01. This program is designed to assist young people with moderate to severe support needs to explore alternatives to employment, including options to increase their participation in the wider community.

The need for quality disability services was a significant element of the recommendations of the board of inquiry. With this in mind, we are working on the development of a quality framework which will include: a set of performance standards and quality indicators that support monitoring, evaluation of service performance and continuous quality improvement; an incident reporting system that supports safe practice and continuous improvement; strong and responsive internal complaint and client feedback processes; and an independent assessment of service performance, including the auditing of performance, as well as compliance with standards and legislation, with a particular focus on health and safety.

Mr Speaker, the government is in agreement with the broad direction of the majority of the recommendations of the board. Necessarily, where those recommendations have been tempered by decisions of the Supreme Court in relation to the natural justice accorded to several officers, we have again reflected on those matters in our response.

A key feature of the government's response to the safety issues raised by the board of inquiry is the creation of the position of Disability Services Commissioner. The commissioner, an office to be created in legislation, will have the power to audit compliance with service standards and to issue binding directions to rectify deficient services. These powers will apply to all government-funded services across both the government and the non-government sectors. I am particularly pleased that we have been able to respond positively on the matter of better planning of services across the government, through the development of memorandums of understanding and the promotion of life cycle services, where I am confident we can make real progress.

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