Overview of responses to the Health care for people with cognitive disability Issues paper (Auslan)

Overview of responses to the Health care for people with cognitive disability Issues paper

The Disability Royal Commission investigates the experiences of people with disability.

We received feedback about the experiences of the health care system for people with cognitive disability.

We released an issues paper asking for feedback last November.

Forty responses from people with disability, family members, academic and organisations are available on our website.

We were told about the barriers and challenges people with cognitive disability face in the health system, for example:

• Health professions were not equipped to communicate with people with a cognitive disability. This meant they could not conduct proper health assessments.
• Concerns about access to affordable, quality health care. This meant people delayed seeing a health professional, especially people in group homes.
• Limited number of psychiatrists equipped to treat people with autism
• The use of restrictive practices, and physical and chemical restraints.

Responses also included examples of good practice and proposals for changes

Responses will help develop our final recommendations to improve the future for people with cognitive disability.

For more information visit our website. Go to ‘policy & research’ and click on ‘issues papers’.