Ability Therapy Specialists Pty Ltd

Essentially, when the states hand over certain controls of the disability sector to the #NDIS, existing standards for safety, dignity, and human rights once covered by state policies will translate to national standards. For example, the NSW Behaviour Support Policy and Practice Guide.

The assumption is that existing standards will actually remain if not become subject to increasing quality assurance measures. Over time standards may also raise and in ways this is already happening. No one would suggest standards may fall or become less.

If anything the NDIS vision indicates a rather comprehensive overhaul of disability service standards quite unlike anything Australia has seen in past.

This development may be combined with other changes across the sector, and influenced by external forces like legal and community expectations, leading to higher standards of care and professionalism among disability service organizations.

The role of the Disability Support Worker is due for reappraisal. We often consider the DSW role as defined so far by common sense as quite inadequate to the tasks and demands of the job. We see a new role emerging in practice where staff gain greater skills across a range of areas particularly within mental health support. Something we have called a Disability Support Clinician.

In similar ways we are seeing the disability sector slowly shifting away from one stop shops, orgs offering everything under one umbrella, toward a greater emphasis on multi-professional input and collaboration. Naturally no one org can do nor specialise in everything and often by trying to do too much orgs become top heavy and inflexible. In these settings behaviour support and access to counselling and other therapeutic services often become overlooked if not avoided for the simple fact that therapeutic work often involves question of the status quo.

Not at all beside the point, we are well into this discussion and we have not even defined key terms like #restrictivepractices and behaviour support. The reason I have not looked at the practical details yet is that our current situation in Australia demands seeing the big picture within the transition to full NDIS jurisdiction. Dispelling a few key myths. And setting the stage for clearly looking at standards for behaviour support.

As you might guess this article is turned into a mini series… a bit of a drama really… but a discussion that actually often involves extremely important values. For example?

Health. Safety. Individual and staff rights. Human rights more broadly but often in cases where maintenance and oversight of these rights becomes critically important. Dignity and duty. Freedom and responsibility. Ethics and standards of care… and these are only a few of the values applied in #behavioursupport and the closely related field of #mentalhealth.