Why disability laws and policies should encourage community participation, not closed environments – By Natalie Wade

Hiding in plain sight: Why disability laws and policies should encourage community participation, not closed environments

NATALIE WADE, PRINCIPAL LAWYER, EQUALITY LAWYERS

People with disability have been living in institutions since the colonisation of South Australia (and time before that around Australia and the world). Locked away from the community, isolated from their families and without work or education rights was seen to be the norm – and for some groups with the current community – this still is the standard approach to long-term housing for people with disability. It is important to understand the history behind the institutionalisation of people with disability, to advance the rights of people with disability to housing, independent living and social and economic participation.

DISABILITY INSTITUTIONS IN SOUTH AUSTRALIA

At the time of colonisation, and for some 42 years after, people with disability were found in hospital but when they were no longer sick enough to be in hospital, were moved to the Destitute Asylum.1 In 1878, the Home for Incurables was established. Patients admitted from 1879 to the Home for Incurables “… suffered from some kind of incurable disease which was neither contagious, nor infectious, and was mentally sound.”2 Prior to the establishment of the Home for Incurables, people with disability were mostly found at the Destitute Asylum. The beds were in rooms like hospital wards and patients cared for by nursing staff. The Julia Farr Centre (previously the Home for Incurables) stopped taking new residents in 2014, with the last resident leaving in 2020.3

In 1939, the Somerton Crippled Children’s Home was established by the Cripple Children’s Association for children with polio disease. In 1944, the Home expanding to providing housing to children living with cerebral palsy and in 1951 included children living with neuromuscular diseases. In 1976, the children from the Somerton Home moved to a new Regency Park site, named “Regency Park Centre for the Young Disabled”. The residential facility was closed in 1992.4

In 1971, the Strathmont Centre was established to provide accommodation and training of people with intellectual disabilities, including children and young people. Run by the Intellectual Disability Services Council (IDSC), the Centre was a deliberate shift away from the wardlike hospital approach at the Home for Incurables and Somerton Home, and offered “a collection of 17 villas, each containing four home units, surrounded by courtyards and lawns, and with a library, swimming pool and meeting hall”.5 The Strathmont Centre closed in 2014.

For almost two centuries, people with disability have been housed in institutions; removed from the community and their families, without work or education rights. These closed environments have informed the tone and approach of public policy and laws for housing of people with disability.

CLOSING INSTITUTIONS – A NEW APPROACH TO DISABILITY HOUSING

Leading up to the closure of the large adult institutions, State Government turned to new ways to support people with disability in the community. “Group homes”, where people with disability lived in the same house with 3 -4 residents and “cluster sites”, where people with disability lived in separate units or apartments but on the same parcel of land became the next iteration of housing rights for the disability community.

Significant motivation for housing models throughout history has been found in funding everyday supports. Large institutions were built on a medicalised model where treatment and therapy were provided onsite. But in the smaller versions of community institutions, in a group home or cluster site settings, the economies of scale to have multiple people with disability living who required similar levels of support made a version of common sense. Rather than funding a person to live with their family, or in suburb of their choosing, congregating those people where paid support staff could visit frequently throughout the day (or stay for the purposes of 24/7 care) was more economical and reasonable in a world where the choice of the person was not considered. However this version saw people with disability “shut out” of the community, facing “socially, culturally and politically isolated”6 .

THE NDIS VERSION

In 2013, the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) federalised the funding for disability support services and promised to ‘support the independence and social and economic participation of people with disability’7 and ‘enable people with disability to exercise choice and control in pursuit of their goals and the planning and delivery of their supports’8. It was hoped, if not expected, by advocates and those with disability that this would finally transform the housing options for people with disability. That housing options would support people with disability to choose where they live, and who they live with.

The latest iteration of disability housing under the NDIS model is Specialist Disability Accommodation (SDA). SDA is “accommodation for people who require specialist housing solutions, including to assist with the delivery of supports that cater for their extreme functional impairment or very high support needs”. The National Disability Insurance Scheme (Specialist Disability Accommodation) Rules 2020 (SDA Rules), an instrument under the NDIS Act, allows funding for different models of housing: • existing stock for a building that already exists and houses 5 or less longer-term residents or more than 5 longer-term residents if they are from the same family,9 • legacy stock for buildings that already existing to house more than 5 long longer-term residents and have shared areas10, and • a new build which is built on or after1

April 2016, to house 5 or fewer longerterm residents11 .

Natalie Wade (left) demonstrates techniques to communicate with people with disability at a recent Communication Partners event.

The SDA Rules go on to state that the SDA building types that will attract funding are: • an apartment: self contained and typically built above or below another dwelling; • villa, duplex and townhouse: has 3 or less residents, but separated from each other; • house: low-rise dwelling with gardens and a courtyard and features of separation in land and living arrangements • group home: 4 or 5 long term residents.12

This is a shorthand way to describe a very complex system with various legislative instrumentalities and Price Guides that govern who gets what. And while it seems that there is finally choice and control for people with disability, a closer look at the number of SDA properties that feature congregate or shared arrangements is alarming. The continued funding of existing and legacy stock perpetuates previous models of group homes and cluster sites, even some larger dwellings with more than five people with disability. The apartment, villa/ duplex/townhouse funding resembles what we previously thought of as cluster sites and congregate care models.

WHERE WE ARE GOING VS. WHERE WE WANT TO GO

On the current NDIS legislative framework and public policies, it looks as though we are going for a third century of closed environments when housing people with disability. So long as we build law and public policy around people with disability living in specific places in our community, rather than in public or social housing, private rentals and owner-occupied homes we will continue to keep people with disability in closed environments.

Closed environments do not have to look as draconian as a prison, as bland as a nursing home or as intimidating as a 9-storey building glaring over Fullarton. These environments can be small apartments, units and villas throughout the suburbs of South Australia. But where we create housing options that bring people with disability together, who would otherwise not live together, provide them with standardised supports and do not advance their right to social and economic participation, closed environments are created. Hiding in plain sight. B

Endnotes 1 Kerr, C. The Home for Incurables – The First 100

Years, Luthern Publishing House, p 6. 2 Kerr, C. The Home for Incurables – The First 100

Years, Luthern Publishing House, p 6. 3 Department of Human Services, Highgate

Park to be sole, legacy to support people with disability (Media Release) 17 April 2021 < https://dhs. sa.gov.au/latest-news/media-releases-2021/ highgate-park-to-be-sold,-legacy-to-supportpeople-with-disability?utm_campaign=latestnews&utm_source=web&utm_content=homepage&utm_term=Highgate%20Park%20to%20 be%20sold,%20legacy%20to%20support%20 people%20with%20disability> 4 Novita, History of Novita (Web Page) <https:// www.novita.org.au/history-of-novita/> 5 Find & Connect – History and Information about Australian orphanages, children’s homes and other institutions, Strathmont

Centre (1971 – 2014) (Web Page) < https:// www.findandconnect.gov.au/guide/sa/

SE01288#tab2> 6 Australian Government, ‘Shut Out: The

Experience of People with Disability and their

Families in Australia” (2009) p. 1. 7 National Disability Insurance Scheme Act 2013 (Cth), s 3(c). 8 National Disability Insurance Scheme Act 2013 (Cth), s 3(e). 9 National Disability Insurance Scheme (Specialist

Disability Accommodation) Rules 2020, s 6. 10 National Disability Insurance Scheme (Specialist

Disability Accommodation) Rules 2020, s 7. 11 National Disability Insurance Scheme (Specialist

Disability Accommodation) Rules 2020, s 8. 12 National Disability Insurance Scheme (Specialist

Disability Accommodation) Rules 2020, Schedule 1.

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