Sixth Progress Report

Sixth Progress Report

The Disability Royal Commission has published its Sixth Progress Report on its website. It covers activities from 1 January to 30 June 2022.

Public hearings

In this period we held five public hearings. The hearings looked at:

• the experiences of women and girls with disability, focusing on family violence
• the experience of people with disability engaging with Disability Employment Services, focusing on the provider called Aimbig Employment
• the experience of people with disability working in Australian Disability Enterprises
• preventing and responding to violence, abuse, neglect and exploitation in day program services for people with disability run by Australian Foundation for Disability (Afford)
• the experience of children and young people with disability in different education settings.

Roundtables and publications

In this reporting period, we held two public roundtables. They were on supported decision-making and guardianship.

We also published:

• three public hearing reports
• a research report on changing community attitudes
• two policy documents including an issues paper on the impact of the Omicron wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Community engagement

In the first half of this year we held a range of community engagements. Some focused on women and girls with disability, and some on children with disability.

We visited First Nations communities around the country, including in Western Australia and Northern Territory. We also held engagements with First Nations people with disability who are LGBTIQ+.

Submissions and private sessions

Between 1 January and 30 June this year, we received 1,389 submissions about people’s experiences of violence, abuse, neglect and exploitation. This is an increase of 65 per cent from the previous six months.

We held 298 private sessions during the same period. We received a lot of registrations for private sessions during this time. Registrations for private sessions closed on 30 June 2022.

Some of the themes raised in submissions and private sessions included:

• difficulties accessing the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS)
• getting poor quality of care from health services, or being neglected or misdiagnosed by health services
• being isolated and getting less support in group homes due to the COVID-19 pandemic
• barriers to reporting violence, abuse, neglect or exploitation –
• such as organisations not investigating, police not following up reports, and disability support providers not taking action on complaints.

Our impact to date

The Royal Commission has led to changes across many areas that will improve the lives of people with disability.

One example from this reporting period is the Australian Government’s commitment to major investments and reforms in health care. These have been made in response to issues raised in our public hearings on health. 

Commitments include:

• reducing the inappropriate use of psychotropic medications to control behaviour of people with disability
• improving access to appropriate care for people with disability
• funding for a National Centre for Excellence in Intellectual Disability Health.

More information

The full sixth progress report is available on our website.

It contains more details about our activities, as well as some personal stories people have shared with us.

disability.royalcommission.gov.au/