Kelly Calls on Rann & Cappo: Release the 2010 disability unmet need data now!
18/02/2011
In the lead-up to the release of the Social Inclusion Board’s much-anticipated ‘blueprint’ for Disability Service provision in South Australia, Dignity for Disability MLC Kelly Vincent calls on Premier Mike Rann and Monsignor David Cappo to guarantee that it will be more than just another report to be left on the Government’s shelf.
“I’ve heard from many people in the disability community who are highly suspicious of yet another report and fear that it will be nothing more than mere rhetoric because let’s face it, we’ve had a lot of it and we clearly need more than rhetoric, when it comes to solving today’s disability unmet needs crisis that thousands of people with disability in this State face” said Ms Vincent.
“I met with Monsignor Cappo last year and made it very clear that any ‘blueprint’ must first deal with the current and ongoing Unmet Needs crisis. Quite frankly, focusing solely on the future of disability services without addressing the current dire straits is like sitting down to write a 10 year plan to deliver safe drinking water while the source of contaminated water continues to run incessantly and poison people’s lives. Monsignor Cappo admitted later that he had taken my message to heart – that we were in the midst of a crisis, so now is the time for him to put his money where his mouth is, and the Government must of course follow suit directly.
“In order for the report to be taken seriously it must be more than an oratory on how things should be. At a bare minimum, it must acknowledge and address the unmet needs crisis of people with disabilities in this State today and in doing so offer solutions as to how to ‘fund’ a way out of this crisis NOW. Next the report must offer a viable and sustainable method of delivering services in the future driven by consumer choice. Recent Federal turmoil suggests Rann will get little help from them.
“Of course, in order to respond to the Unmet Needs Crisis, Monsignor Cappo will need the most up-to-date Unmet Needs data, because if we don’t have the data we don’t know what we’re dealing with.
“Thanks to this lacklustre Government we are still relying on figures from July 2010 which included a 53% jump in 12 months in critical needs and frankly, if this Government wants Monsignor Cappo to deliver a real blueprint for disability in this state it will release the 2010 full year data now. So at the risk of sounding like a broken record, I again call on this Government to release the most up to date Unmet Needs data from December 2010 and not wait nearly six months like the did last year by which time both the Cappo Report and the Australian productivity Commission report into NDIS will have been completed.
“Monsignor Cappo has said that the Social Inclusion Board wants to support all people with disability to be active citizens in our community and in order to do this he must join the thousands of voices calling on the Government for immediate action.”
