Mariana
Content Warning: These stories are about violence, abuse, neglect and exploitation and may include references to suicide or self-harming behaviours. They may contain graphic descriptions and strong language and may be distressing. Some narratives may be about First Nations people who have passed away. If you need support, please see Contact & support.
‘There’s a link between the way disability services are regulated in Australia and how the current methods are allowing violence, abuse and neglect to remain in plain sight, unreported and undetected.’
Mariana has worked for disability service organisations ‘as a consultant and a practitioner’ for two decades. For the past 10 years she’s focused on quality control in the disability sector.
‘To identify limitations and you know, poor quality service provision. Specifically, the way that disability services in Australia are regulated and monitored to better identify abuse and neglect.’
Australia falls way short on that, she told the Royal Commission, ‘perpetuating’ abuse of people with disability.
‘The current system doesn't monitor service quality adequately. Much of my findings were that people performing regulation in Australia would focus predominantly on paperwork. Very little time goes towards observing the lived experience of people with disabilities … So, you know, people with disabilities at the moment really have very little scope to sort of say, “I'm not okay.” … There are so many layers of restriction imposed on people with disability.’
Through her research, Mariana spoke to hundreds of staff and leaders in disability organisations to try to understand the shortfalls.
‘In Australia we've got a very linear view of regulation … [where there are] no conversations, no questions asked.’
The regulatory body is ‘not allowed to consult’ with disability service workers.
‘Staff attitudes and knowledge and perceptions, you know, they're one of our biggest indicators of whether or not good or poor service provision has been applied. So it's a very odd system. People don't feel safe to raise things necessarily with auditors because it's very much a compliance or noncompliance culture.’
Mariana has encountered a lot of staff with ‘minimal training’. They have no understanding of ‘communicating trauma or issues through nonverbal communication’, she said.
‘That means that people are not reporting violence, abuse and neglect, they’re unable to recognise it at all levels from the board down. It’s re-labelled as incidents … Challenging behaviour, or property damage or whatever. We need observation methods from specialists who really understand disability.’
Mariana wants to see regulatory reform to make the system ‘more responsive’. Currently, she said, there’s ‘a lot of waste’ and money spent on process that ‘doesn’t improve anything’.
‘Essentially there's a lot of regulatory ritualism going on. There's a lot of tick-box compliance … We don't learn from it, from a wider sector benchmarking perspective. If we can just try to, in Australia, see regulation as not just a benign big stick but a way to educate and inform whilst critiquing practice for knowledgeable individuals, I think that we could actually do really great things.’
Disclaimer: This is the story of a person who shared their personal experience with the Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability through a submission or private session. The names in this story are pseudonyms. The person who shared this experience was not a witness and their account is not evidence. They did not take an oath or affirmation before providing the story. Nothing in this story constitutes a finding of the Royal Commission. Any views expressed are those of the person who shared their experience, not of the Royal Commission.