By CAMERON LUCADOU-WELLS
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IT’S fear that is motivating Dandenong West parents Kaye and Peter Taylor to don red T-shirts and rally in Melbourne next Monday for a national disability insurance scheme .
Their 45-year-old dependent daughter Donna – all 28 kilograms of her – lives in a wheelchair. She has cerebral palsy, a spine twisted by scoliosis, spastic quadraplegia and an intellectual disability.
Mr Taylor said he and his wife’s greatest fear was that Donna would be “put in an old people’s home” when he and his wife, both 68, can no longer look after her.
To get disability accommodation, she would join a statewide waiting list of about 2000 with urgent-care needs.
Phillip Toovey, chief executive of service provider Options, said the people who got off the waiting list were those in “absolute crisis”, those “hanging off the cliff on one finger”.
“It’s becoming more common there are people relinquishing their kids at respite [homes]. They say, ‘I’m not going to pick them up. I can’t do it any more’.”
The proposed insurance scheme would give TAC-style cover for people with permanent disabilities and end the chronic under-funding of disability services.
Parent carers Gerry and Marie Weldon of Noble Park have been on a three-year waiting list for accommodation for their 38-year-old son Daniel.
Mr and Mrs Weldon said they were often knocked back for respite care when they needed to go out, for example to a wedding.
The only respite centre in Greater Dandenong is a six-room Department of Human Services home in Moodemere Street, Noble Park. It has about 1000 families on its books and is often booked out months in advance.
“We don’t sleep very well and very seldom go out,” Mr Weldon said. “Our big worry is when we’re not here to do it any more.”
The scheme would cost $13.6 billion a year – double the disability funding – and give individualised payouts to each person. Each recipient would gain an average of $3800 more annual funding.
Organisers of the rally at Federation Square at noon next Monday want a funding commitment and details of the insurance scheme’s roll-out next year.
A spokeswoman for Disability Reform Minister Jenny Macklin said the federal government had committed $10million to “lay the foundations” for the scheme.
“We know our current system isn’t delivering the kind of care and support that we all expect for people with disability.”
BIG DEMAND
Disability services in Greater Dandenong
■ There are about 16,000 people with a disability.
■ Options Victoria estimates 70 per cent of its clients live at home, mainly with parents.
■ The remainder live in group homes, supported residential services or nursing homes.
