Deandre and Leisa

In the early 2000s Deandre, a First Nations man in his early 40s, was seriously assaulted. He suffered a traumatic brain injury and has lived in residential care ever since. Though by no means old, the only option available to him after the assault was an aged care facility.

Deandre’s daughter Leisa said the facility was not appropriate for him. He was ‘surrounded by older, frail people’, and expected to behave as they did. Yet although he had neurological damage that impacted some of his physical abilities, he was ‘still a young man’.

‘He was expected to sit and do puzzles or crosswords, which were beyond his capability. Crosswords and puzzles – he didn’t enjoy those and so he began acting out a lot.’

Eventually, under pressure from management at the home, Deandre’s parents moved him to a lower care facility. Deandre absconded, and after that was moved to several different homes before ending up in the closed dementia ward of a facility in another small town.

Leisa explained that Deandre’s injury had caused him to have poor impulse control, so he acted very suddenly on any thoughts that came into his mind. He might knock his chair over getting up, bump the table or push past people in the corridor. It made him a ‘very high risk’ to the elderly patients around him.

‘Again, it was really not a suitable environment for him. But again, it was really all that there was. We didn’t – we weren’t given any other options.’

In the early 2020s, Deandre was diagnosed with dementia. He was sent to a mental health unit for treatment, and the facility where he’d lived for more than 10 years by that time refused to let him return.

Leisa tried to find somewhere else for him to go, without success. She also referred the facility to the aged care oversight agency for breaching its contract with Deandre. Under its direction the facility allowed him to return, but he returned to a situation Leisa described as ‘extremely stressful’.

‘The staff didn’t want him there. The residents didn’t want him there. The residents’ families didn’t want him there. He was constantly copping abuse for behaviours that he simply couldn’t control. He had a lot of ticks and he had some verbalisations associated with those ticks, and it was a really hostile environment for him.’

Leisa organised support workers to take Deandre out and employed a specialist to formulate a plan that would help manage his behaviours.

‘And none of this – none of this was enough … They just wanted to sedate him.’

One day Leisa found out that staff had sedated Deandre without the necessary permissions or required medical protocols in place. She complained again to the aged care oversight agency. It upheld her complaint and required the facility’s director of nursing to ‘set the remedy for the situation, which was simply that they need to follow the rules around sedation,’ Leisa said.

‘I did not think that was right … There were no repercussions for the people involved. No personal repercussions, no professional repercussions,’ she said. ‘It’s not fair that some of our – some of the nation’s most vulnerable people don’t have adequate protection. That there are more consequences … to dropping rubbish on the street than there is to abusing, neglecting or otherwise mistreating a vulnerable person.’

After a wait of several years, Deandre now lives in specialised disability accommodation funded by the NDIS.

In organising Deandre’s NDIS support Leisa, as his legal guardian, felt excluded and ignored.

‘As an unpaid carer I have just felt so undervalued,’ she said. ‘I constantly have to find myself justifying my position as a carer, but also my formal position as a guardian in insisting on my rights as that guardian. And getting people who are paid in the industry to actually do the bare minimum of their job. It’s really frustrating.’