Page 2107 - Week 07 - Thursday, 16 May 2013
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Official visitors are dedicated individuals who employ their talent and experience to identify and resolve problems in environments where we find our most vulnerable people. They have a talent for keen observation. They are problem solvers. They can be relied on to get things done. They do have an exceptional ability to establish and maintain relationships and they channel these talents to support and protect vulnerable people and ensure the environment they operate in runs as it was meant to.
Official visitors have maintained important relationships with the ministers responsible for these closed environments. As I have explained, they are the eyes and ears of their ministers, observers of their environments and reporters of both function and dysfunction.
This bill reflects the experiences of the community about how a scheme to protect vulnerable people should operate. The Official Visitor Act introduced changes to the official visitor scheme. This bill clarifies elements of that scheme to ensure it can be implemented in the short term and operate well in the longer term.
The bill proposes that the Official Visitor Act should commence on 1 September this year, after the allocation of budget funding for the new official visitors under the new scheme. This bill broadly substitutes the words “inspect” and “inspection” in the act with “visit”, to clarify the functions of official visitors. The word “inspect” incorrectly suggests functions that are not undertaken by official visitors who visit entitled people to talk with them and to receive and consider complaints.
This position is consistent with the functions of visitors in other jurisdictions. Despite their legislative authority to enter visitable places, neither the New South Wales official community visitor scheme, the Victorian Public Advocate community visitor scheme nor the Queensland guardianship community visitor scheme operate as inspection schemes. Visitors in these schemes talk with entitled people and service providers to identify problems and inquire into the quality of services and care provided to residents and patients at visitable places. These visitors can inspect documents, report on matters relating to treatment and care and refer serious issues for investigation.
The substitution of the term “visit” is an important distinction to clarify the functions of official visitors in the new ACT scheme. It will not diminish an official visitor’s authority in a visitable place to inquire into the treatment or care provided to entitled people. The act sets out the clear consequences for a failure to provide assistance to an official visitor.
The bill will remove provisions detailing visit frequency requirements under the Children and Young People Act 2008, the Corrections Management Act 2007 and the Mental Health (Treatment and Care) Act 1994 so that these may, instead, be determined by disallowable instrument under the visit and complaints guidelines at section 23 of the act. Since the Official Visitor Act already indicates that the guidelines will provide for these operational details, this amendment maintains consistency with the structure of the act and ensures each scheme reflects strong and consistent core standards.
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