Zaria
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.
‘I don’t want anybody to treat me any different from someone else. I’m just a lady that loves my husband and my dog, and my boys, that wants to be happy, that wants to know that everything is going to be safe and secure.’
Zaria, a First Nations woman in her late 60s, has only recently ‘come home’.
Zaria has psychosocial and mild intellectual disability. Her husband had been her primary carer until she had a stroke causing her ‘never to walk again’. At that point ‘it got a bit too much for him’, so Zaria moved into a nursing home.
Zaria hated the nursing home. ‘I was not happy there. I felt very depressed, suicidal and that,’ she told the Royal Commission.
She described being made to wait for more than an hour to go to the toilet, and being made to wait, wet, in soiled bedclothes for long periods. The meals were ‘absolutely disgusting’, she said. ‘I wouldn’t give them to a dog.’
Zaria desperately wanted to go home, but said the NDIA stood in her way.
Zaria had been an NDIS participant before moving into the home, but received a letter ‘out of nowhere’ saying her access was being revoked. Zaria had to go through an independent assessment and get ‘lots of evidence’. But when her support was reinstated, it was only for her psychosocial disability, not her physical disability. Since the stroke Zaria was no longer able to walk. She said the NDIA was withholding support that would allow her to return home.
Zaria and her advocate, Meg, told the Royal Commission about the actions of Zaria’s NDIS support coordinator during this time. ‘[The support coordinator] wasn’t doing her role,’ Meg said. ‘It was found out that she was using all the support financial funding, but not using any of [Zaria’s] supports to actually support [her] … We asked to understand where the money was going, and they couldn’t account for where it was going.’
With Meg’s help, Zaria took her complaint to the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission. As part of the resolution, the provider assigned a new support coordinator to Zaria to ‘start supporting [her] with her goal to move home, which was a very achievable goal’.
‘It took two years for the NDIS to give [Zaria] a plan that was suitable for her to be able to start planning to go home,’ Meg said.
Zaria was still in the nursing home when COVID-19 hit and was subject to the home’s ‘really strict lockdown’. Meg said that ‘under the mandate there were exceptions … in relation to mental health needs’, but that the home ‘just flatly refused that for [Zaria]’.
‘We had to escalate that to the Ombudsman to get them involved to try and get some movement to negotiate and allow it. Some of the things that they said was that [Zaria] just has to be like everyone else and put up and deal with it. But there was just no awareness of [her] mental health needs at all … It was a very, very traumatising time for [Zaria].’
Meanwhile, without her knowledge, Zaria was accruing significant debt. The state trustee manages Zaria’s finances. While she was in the nursing home the trustee failed to pay a number of invoices, despite the funds being in Zaria’s account. It was ‘honestly shocking’ to Zaria when the nursing home told her she owed them a large sum of money.
Meg told the Royal Commission that Zaria ‘lives fortnight to fortnight’. The state trustee acknowledged their fault in the matter and negotiated a payment plan for Zaria. But Zaria now has to pay ‘$40 a fortnight for the rest of her life because of that error that state trustees made’. Zaria and Meg are trying to get the debt waived or have the state trustee take responsibility for the debt. ‘We’re still in that process,’ said Meg.
Zaria hopes one day she can be an advocate for other people with disability.
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.