T R A N S C R I P T
FAMILY AND COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT COMMITTEE
Inquiry into social inclusion and Victorians with a disability
Melbourne — 26 May 2014
Members
Mrs A. Coote
Ms B. Halfpenny
Mr J. Madden
Chair: Ms D. Ryall
Deputy Chair: Ms B. Halfpenny
Mrs J. Powell
Ms D. Ryall
Staff
Executive Officer: Dr J. Bush
Research Officer: Ms V. Finn
Administrative Officer: Ms N. Tyler
Witnesses
Mr G. Foard, chief executive officer,
Ms S. Nicol, manager, Community Connections,
Ms S. Smith, coordinator, Community Connections,
Ms S. Bunnett, outcomes development coordinator,
Ms R. Lewis-Lansdell, advisory group representative, and
Mr M. Sellwood, advisory group member, Melba Support Services.
26 May 2014 Family and Community Development Committee 1

The CHAIR — Thank you for coming before the committee today and assisting us with our inquiry into social inclusion and Victorians with a disability. As outlined in the guide given to you, the hearing is recorded by Hansard and that is done under the provisions of the Parliamentary Committees Act 2003 and other relevant legislation. As such, it affords you parliamentary privilege, but with anything you say outside this hearing you are not afforded that privilege. A Hansard transcript of today’s proceedings will be forwarded to you soon and you are able to make grammatical corrections to that if needs be. We ask you to take 15 minutes to present to us, and then we might move into asking some questions.
Mr FOARD — Can we be relatively informal and speak on a first name basis?
The CHAIR — Please do.
Mr FOARD — Can I begin by thanking you, Dee, for the opportunity to be here. We absolutely value this chance to talk to you about something we are very passionate about, and that is social inclusion. Can I also say that I know the committee has done some really important work this year. The child abuse work was a fantastic piece of work, and it was very high profile. This probably is not quite as high profile, but from our point of view this is absolutely just as important as the work you have done previously. As I say, we are really pleased to be a part of it.
Glenn Foard is my name. I am the CEO of Melba Support Services. I have the great privilege of leading that organisation and knowing the people we have here with us. We wanted to be inclusive today, so we have brought people who are equally passionate about social inclusion. The people we work with on a daily basis continue to inspire us. They surprise us on a regular basis, and when we see the challenges they have and the resilience they bring to their lives it is an amazing thing. We are amazed by that. That is me, and a brief introduction. I know time is precious, so I will pass over to Rhiannon Lewis-Lansdell.
Ms LEWIS-LANSDELL — Hello. My name is Rhiannon and I like Melba. I like to go swimming and shopping. As well, Melba supports me with the interaction with all my friends. I enjoy today because we came on the train and then I went out for lunch and then I came here to talk to you guys. Susie is so wonderful at
Melba and I love her. I hope that everyone at Melba can interact as well as I do. Bye.
The CHAIR — Thank you, Rhiannon.
Mrs COOTE — Well done.
Mr MADDEN — Well done.
Mr FOARD — And you are a member of our Melba advisory group. That is the representative group of people who purchase services from us. Rhiannon makes the decision to purchase services from Melba, and it is a really important part of our work to have the advisory group. We have a number of other members of the advisory group with us in the public area. If you have had the chance to see the DVD that we, including
Michael, produced for this occasion — —
Mr SELLWOOD — I am.
Mrs COOTE — Hi, Michael.
Mr FOARD — That was their opportunity to share their thoughts about participating in community life. The importance of work and even the importance of participating, as you may have seen, in the political process is a really important part of social inclusion. Michael has kindly brought some extra copies of the DVD, in case anyone would like to grab one. Can I also ask Sarina Bunnett to introduce herself.
Ms BUNNETT — I am Sarina Bunnett. I have worked at Melba for about 20 years now and in disability around 40 years. My role at Melba is around communication and planning as well as supporting people around their outcomes and achieving their goals, their personal focus.
Mr FOARD — We will come back to Sarina in just a moment.
26 May 2014 Family and Community Development Committee 2

Ms NICOL — I am Sally Nicol. I am the manager of Community Connection. I have been with Melba for just on seven years. I support a fabulous group of people who are really committed to getting people out and about in the community every day. They do some great work and people are really part of our local community.
Mr FOARD — Given that Michael has joined us up at the front, Michael, would you like to say hi to the people here? Michael Sellwood is another member of our advisory group.
Mr SELLWOOD — I would, but I do not know everyone.
Mrs COOTE — I am Andrea. Hi, Michael.
Mr MADDEN — I am Justin. How are you, Michael?
Mr SELLWOOD — I do not know you.
Mrs COOTE — You do now.
Mr SELLWOOD — Not really.
Mr MADDEN — Not really well — put it that way.
Mrs COOTE — He used to be a good footballer.
Mr MADDEN — That was a long time ago.
Mr SELLWOOD — Justin Madden!
Mrs COOTE — That’s the one.
Mr SELLWOOD — Is that your real name?
Mr MADDEN — That’s right; that’s my real name.
Mrs COOTE — That’s his name.
The CHAIR — Does that mean Michael is a Carlton supporter?
Mr SELLWOOD — Hawthorn.
Mr MADDEN — You sound like you know your football.
Mr SELLWOOD — I do. You’re retired now.
Mr MADDEN — I am, yes — in more ways than one.
Mr SELLWOOD — You don’t play anymore.
Mr MADDEN — No, I don’t play anymore. I have not played for a long, long time.
Mr SELLWOOD — You used to.
Mr FOARD — We should also introduce Sue Smith, who is here supporting Rhiannon today.
The CHAIR — You are the one that she loves.
Ms SMITH — Yes, so it would seem.
Mr FOARD — That is true. We have heard from Rhiannon speaking about some of the things she believes are important. Perhaps we can hear from Sal, who wants to mention briefly the importance of work, which is a fundamental outcome that we strive to achieve for people, and the way that we go about measuring outcomes, which we think is an important aspect of the way we go about things at Melba, too.
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Ms NICOL — Over the past approximately three years, which I suppose commenced with a Changing Days grant, we have looked at supporting people who predominantly, if you look at the Commonwealth Supported
Employment scheme, are deemed to be unemployable. We have looked to support those people on an individual basis, focusing on people’s abilities and then linking them into what they are really good at and where their passions sit. We have identified that there are a lot of things out there that people we support through Community Connection can be involved in.
When we talk about people being at work, it is not 8 hours a day. It might be for an hour and a half or 2 hours twice a week; sometimes it might be for half an hour once a week. But it is getting people out doing things that are valuable, that have social roles, so that people we support are looked at not as being people who constantly take but as people who actually have value and worth and give back to the community. Of the approximately
78 people we have at Community Connection, about 32 people do a variety of different roles across any given week. We have got people who support local primary schools by picking up their mail from the local post office and delivering — —
Mr FOARD — You might have seen that in the DVD — Matthew’s delivery service.
Ms NICOL — Daniel Barrallen and a range of other people are involved every week, to the point where if they do not turn up with the mail, we have got people on the phone going, ‘Hello? Where are you?’. For us that is a real significant identifier that the people are included, they have worth and they are missed.
We have also got a small social enterprise that commenced about two years ago. That was originally based around one lady who loved to chop — ‘You can sit here and chop paper all day, or you can probably chop chocolate’. We had other ladies who really liked putting stickers on bags, and we had another lady who was really good with her hands. We teed that up through the support of one of the key staff at Community
Connection in Ormeau Road and recruited a volunteer pastry chef. Now we have what is called the Able
Bakehouse, which is a preferred supplier for the Shire of Yarra Ranges in terms of biscuits, slices, chutneys — a whole range of things. That now includes six people who are there developing work skills and a whole range of other people.
There are about 47 people now involved in the bakehouse. People are using their skills to grow vegetables and the tomatoes and the onions that go into the chutneys. We have got farmers who have heard about our bakehouse, and they ring us now and say, ‘Hey! We have got a whole heap of strawberries. Are you interested?’, so we are developing those partnerships across the valley, so it is not just about the people we support; it is about the entire valley being involved. We have other people who have disabilities who have heard about us and know that at the hall every Thursday morning we bake. They came in one morning, so they are now part of the delivery team. We have got people from all walks of life and of all abilities. It started off because we matched one person who loved to chop and staff who had vision.
Mr FOARD — We have that fundamental view that work is an excellent way to achieve a level of inclusion that may not be achieved otherwise, and we believe we have been creative and innovative in giving people opportunities to work — as Sal says, to take on valued roles. That ability and capacity to work is one of the things that we measure for each of the people who we support, along with 20 other different outcomes. As soon as Sal has given Michael a glass of water, she might want to elaborate, because Sal, and Sarina for that matter, are both accredited trainers in personal outcome measurement. They train our staff to sit down and assess whether we are achieving the outcomes that we set for each individual we support. Each individual might put emphasis on different outcomes amongst the 21 different life areas, and that guides us in the delivery of support.
That is a methodology that we have taken from the Council on Quality and Leadership, a US-based organisation that accredits our work and which developed this approach to measuring outcomes back in the 1990s. Have I summarised it well, Sal, or would you like to add anything else?
Ms NICOL — No, you have done a good job, Glenn.
Mr FOARD — It is a form of accountability from our point of view as a service provider. People who make decisions to purchase services from us have a right to be able to have some way of assessing whether we are delivering what they want us to deliver and whether we are assisting them to achieve the outcomes that they want to achieve in their life.
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As you might have seen in our submission, we set out the 21 different areas where we measure outcomes. A whole range of those relate very much to the notion of social inclusion. Our statement is that all service providers should be measuring outcomes in one way, shape or form, not necessarily using the methodology that we use. Not only is it an accountability measure but if you have got an expectation that you must be increasing social inclusion for the people who you support, then measuring how successful you are is an important aspect and one that we put a lot of weight on. We move to you, Sarina, talking about educational programs.
Ms BUNNETT — She is champing at the bit here.
Mr FOARD — Would you like to add to what you said at the outset, Rhi?
Ms LEWIS-LANSDELL — I like Melba because they support me on an everyday basis. We go swimming, we go shopping, we go to the pub and we go to the park. As well I like Melba because they interact with us — the Melba support group, the meetings we have, the supporting we have and every day like that. I like getting up and going to Melba because I enjoy it. I love Susie, I love Sarina, I love Sal and I love everyone. Bye-bye.
Ms BUNNETT — Rhiannon, I have a question though.
Ms LEWIS-LANSDELL — What?
Ms BUNNETT — The reason why you love Melba?
Ms LEWIS-LANSDELL — Because everyone interacts with you.
Ms BUNNETT — And how do we do that? Do we do that in a way that is about you?
Ms LEWIS-LANSDELL — Yes, in a way that is about me, because I have had some other people in my life who have not done it like that. They have just done it the way that they wanted to do it. They have not included me.
Ms BUNNETT — Part of our outcome measures is to find out what really matters to people — their unique focus — and everyone is individual. Part of our planning is to work out what it is that a person wants and then support the person to do as they choose. That includes a lot of inclusion within our community — things like educational programs. We have got a longstanding relationship with the colleges around our area. For example, one is Oxley College. For 14 years their students — at that really awkward age, year 9 — have come to Melba.
Prior to coming to Melba we run sessions around communication and how to support people, so they have a bit of an inkling as to key word sign and some other communication supports before they come. Then they spend a day doing the things that the people who pay for our services enjoy doing.
We also do that with Luther College and Mount Lilydale College. We have Matt who does his deliveries through two campuses up at St Francis Xavier College. We have certificate IV students who have asked to come to Melba because they want to learn Melba’s unique culture and philosophy.
We also work with our primary schools, because we are aware that it is not just about teenage children. We start with very young students, and we are neighbouring with Mount Evelyn Primary School. We wanted to do that in a fun way, so we are doing a huge art exhibition together, and we are using something that is very similar in that we are going to use people’s wheelchairs as the way in which to create the art.
We are having some really informal relationships with the schools. They do our footy tipping; they come over and collect our footy tipping. Then on top of that we are just starting to pop over and do more of that, just pop in an say hi and spend some time together so that they get used to seeing people who are different to what they normally see in their school ground. We have a whole heap of paid employment. Is that right?
Ms LEWIS-LANSDELL — We have a whole heap of paid employment where we can go to shops and we can get paid. We can go to IGA, and we work there and we can get paid. We go to coffee shops or to the shopping centres. I love Melba because it supports people with disabilities, and it helps people interact with other people. I love everyone at Melba.
Mr FOARD — We believe that changing of attitudes is a fundamentally important strategy to advance social inclusion. A series of reports over a number of years highlights that same aspect of improving social
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inclusion by tackling some of the prejudicial attitudes that still exist in our community and increasing the awareness. The emphasis that we put on engaging with students in particular is part of that long-term effort to change attitudes and to make people more familiar with disability and to take the strangeness and difference away from disability wherever we can.
Ms BUNNETT — In Mount Evelyn we are a part of our community, so it is important for us to be on various committees within our community. One that I joined about five years is our health and safety through the CFA and the local police. That was about raising awareness. But the spin-off of that was that it changed the perception of the CFA and our local police about how much Melba can function as their support. We did a whole heap of campaigns and letter drops and advertising for them, so it has created a world of that reciprocal relationship, which has been wonderful.
Ms LEWIS-LANSDELL — I am ready to say something.
Ms BUNNETT — Go for it.
Ms LEWIS-LANSDELL — Melba has helped me in lots of ways because they have helped me in a way of understanding that I can do more in my life. Before Melba I did not have the understanding of how well they can put stuff together, like in the community, or how I can help with my way of interacting with people and my way of dealing with certain situations. But now I am a happier person because of Melba, because of Susie and I love her.
Ms BUNNETT — We support people around dignity of risk. At Melba one of things we are very proud of is that we are not risk averse — so supporting people to be part of the community sometimes. We give people all the support they need. We take a big breath, and we go — —
Ms LEWIS-LANSDELL — Only because Melba helps us.
Ms BUNNETT — We might talk about Cecilia. Is that all right?
Ms LEWIS-LANSDELL — Yes, Cecilia, a person we support. Cecilia loves to be helped in Melba. She loves the support with us, and we love to support her. Is she the one who lives by herself — Cecilia?
Ms BUNNETT — Yes.
Ms LEWIS-LANSDELL — And she has Down syndrome? She lives by herself.
Ms BUNNETT — We had to take a big breath when she decided she wanted to live by herself rather than, say — her parents passed away, which left Cecilia on her own. She lived with a Melba family for about five or six months until we could work out ways we could help her achieve her lifetime dream, and that was to live in her own home. Through that we put lots of communication supports in place — lots of practice on how to be safe. Then we went, ‘You know what? You can do this’. She learnt how to use public transport, which her father said he never wanted her to do and that she could not do. She does it really well. So just by stepping outside of that, ‘Oh, my goodness, what is going to happen?’, we have managed to help people achieve the things they want.
Mr FOARD — You might have seen — if you have had a chance to look at the DVD, Cecilia is the young woman who is proudly opening up the front door of her flat, where, as Sarina says, she now lives independently. That is affording someone the dignity of risk and allowing them to exercise choice about where they want to live. I hope that was another strong theme that came through from our submission.
You will note that there is not a lot of choice currently in the way that the disability services system works. It has been that way for a long period of time. The principal means of providing accommodation support for people is through group homes. We run group homes, and we think we do that well, but we know that people want to be able to exercise choice in many cases about where they live and, even more importantly, with whom they live with. None of us, I do not believe — none of you, I do not imagine — could contemplate that next week you are going to be living with four or five other people you do not know and whom you probably have not met before and expect that this is going to add to your quality of live in the future.
26 May 2014 Family and Community Development Committee 6

Being able to exercise choice about the people you live with and where you live, we think, is fundamentally important, and in our submission we highlighted the quite inspiring story of Margot and Stavros, two people with challenges in their lives — significant disabilities — who fell in love. The only way they could move in together and get married as they did was to have a place they could call their own home. Stavros had been living in a group home. I have never encountered a situation where two married people are living in a group home; it is just not possible. But they wanted to pursue that dream of theirs, and through the provision of a unit they were able to do exactly that, and their quality of life and their social inclusion was hugely benefited as a result of that fundamental fact of being able to move into a house they could call their own and live together in.
The CHAIR — Thank you, Glenn. We might move to asking questions, if that is okay with you. I just want to talk about the risk issue for a moment. That seems to be a bit of a recurrent theme in terms of balancing the risk of allowing someone to have that level of independence but also the fear that often is associated. It is often a preventable fear as well. That has been a theme. What would your suggestions be on how others, from a social inclusion perspective, might better approach a situation where they are willing to allow that risk to occur?
Ms BUNNETT — I think it is about knowing, ‘Is that exactly what the person wants?’. With Cecilia, if I use her as an example, and there are many others — there is Gary, who sits at a cafe by himself on a Friday and staff do not stay there. It is finding out what that person really wants to do, because if they really want it, they are going to help work towards it. Cecilia really wanted to live on her own, so she embraced all the learning we had to teach her. It was like, ‘Okay, this is what I have to do in order to live by myself’. For her we put in a lot of work around her, so what you don’t see on the DVD is there are nervous people standing back going, ‘Okay, she has got all that right. We’re right to go’. You do not see any of that! We work in the shadows, and we work hard and long at it for a long period of time, till we feel the person is confident and able.
Ms NICOL — It is also about working out what the person wants and then looking at the network around them, because if we use Gary as an example, Gary is a gentleman who uses very few words. He uses a wheelchair to get around. Gary loves op shops. He loves music and he loves coffee. Passions — you put them all together. A little coffee shop/op shop down in Lilydale — it was matching. We went down, spent some time with Gary and introduced Gary, so people got to know who Gary was. In the end the staff gradually just stepped it back to the point where we got to that situation — it was like, ‘You know what? Are you comfortable if we just leave Gary for half an hour? Here are our contact details, and if you cannot get hold of us, here are some contact details if anything happens’.
It was about going, ‘Yes, there is risk here, but you know what? If you focus on the person, get to know the person and get people in that environment to know the person’ — you will notice that we do not use the word
‘client’, because we are all people. We all have different levels of support. Then you step back. Yes, stuff has happened for Gary, but they have rung and said, ‘Hey, this has happened. We have tried this, this and this’. It is like, ‘No worries. We are on our way’, ‘Cool, not a worry’. It is about that reciprocal — again, if you build a relationship, you actually reduce the risk because people know the person; they are not foreign.
Ms BUNNETT — Spot on, Sally — trusting relationships. I had a father who would follow us around the shops. He would follow the bus, and he would appear at the shops behind us. He was concerned that I was perhaps not supporting his daughter closely enough, because he was worried that something might happen.
Over years of me saying, ‘Just step back with me and just watch’ and through that trusting relationship, he learnt to go, ‘You know what, Sarina? You’ve got this. I don’t need to follow you around anymore’. His daughter, who spent so much time with her family, ended up purchasing her own groceries at Woolies because I trained Woolworths staff. I trained everyone, so she was quite protected but she was doing her own thing.
Mr MADDEN — To follow on from that, I am interested in — and you have sort of explained it in a bit of detail — how you build that network of support from outside your organisation, because one of the themes we are getting across the table here when we meet with groups is that organisations are keen to include personnel in the community but there is a bit of nervousness sometimes within the community setting as to how those things occur and how they are managed and what that means to everybody. I would be interested to hear a bit more detail about how you introduce those first few steps.
Ms BUNNETT — In our planning process, Justin, we actually map who is currently in a person’s life and who is closest to them in terms of family, friends, community and services. We take a bit of a look at who is
26 May 2014 Family and Community Development Committee 7

already there and how we build on that. Through our planning process we actually support people if they want to deepen those connections.
For example, Matthew you saw on the DVD. He was visiting a neighbour. Matthew’s house has a Christmas party every year, and these neighbours come across. But Russell had a stroke, and they noticed that Russell was not around, so they actually went across the road and checked on him. They found out that he had had a stroke, and they noticed that the lawn was getting longer and that the weeds were shocking. Larry, who is Matt’s key worker, actually supported Matt to mow lawns and pull weeds because staff are an extension of the person.
Through that and showing Russell that he was prepared as a friend and a neighbour to help him get through this rough time in his life, Russell now pops across and visits, and Russell’s family has embraced Matthew. So for
Matthew’s first planning process, Russell and his family came. That is a first for Matt.
You start with those really tiny connections, and you build on it from there, but as staff and as family or anyone you have to identify what those connections are and then support the community. We spend a lot of time talking about community and supporting community.
Mr FOARD — That investment in the development of social capital, we believe, is well worth the effort and a critical strategy for developing inclusion.
Mr MADDEN — And I think the comments you made about the importance of introducing it situated a little bit further out into that is a critical issue. I think we would probably spend a bit of time working on it.
Ms BUNNETT — I would like to. I used to say that if you look at me long enough, you are in a conversation and bringing people into that conversation, introducing who you are and what you are going to be doing in your day.
Ms LEWIS-LANSDELL — At one stage I would like to live by myself because I think I can do it. I think I can do it in the community. I think I have the strength to do it — to go shopping for myself, to cook for myself, to clean for myself, to do everything by myself. I think I can do that.
Ms BUNNETT — Have you told the committee that you cooked for us and sold your food?
Ms LEWIS-LANSDELL — Yes, I cooked.
Ms BUNNETT — Rhiannon cooks lunch and then sells it to us.
Mr MADDEN — I think you are a bit modest about your cooking.
Mr FOARD — You absolutely are. You catered the lunch with the disability services commissioner when he came to visit, did you not?
Ms LEWIS-LANSDELL — Yes.
Mr FOARD — That went very well.
Ms LEWIS-LANSDELL — When is that happening again?
Mrs COOTE — You will have to ask him! I am sure he would love another lunch.
Mrs POWELL — Just hearing the stories from Michael and Rhiannon, obviously you have put a lot of work into good communication, because they are really good communicators, and they are very happy, with a lot of self-esteem. I have a comment and then a question. It is just a comment about — you were talking about
Margot and Stavros, who now live together in a unit on their own. Have you ever seen the movie, or the video,
A Room with a View ?
Ms BUNNETT — Yes.
Mrs POWELL — I was going to say that this reminded me of that. That was my comment. I know you prepare people, like Michael and Rhiannon and your others, for experiences. How do you prepare them for those bad experiences that they might have, because when they go out in the community children will say something terrible? Do you have to prepare? We cannot change the world and make everybody less
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discriminatory or have good manners, so what do you say to Michael and Rhiannon and the others about not feeling hurt? How do you give them the armour to not feel so badly and not want to do it again — go out?
Ms BUNNETT — Jeanette, I have two stories. A gentleman I supported for many years, Kevin, who uses a wheelchair to get around has significant cerebral palsy. He has a tongue thrust, which means that his tongue is often protruding from his mouth. We were in a shop, and a little girl turned around and said to him, ‘Yucky!
You look yuck!’. My dear friend Kevin — his head went down. Rather than look embarrassed, I said, ‘I tell you what: I bet you don’t have the Harry Potter DVD Kevin has’. She said, ‘Mum!’, and then mum came into it.
Mum was bright red; she was just so embarrassed. I said, ‘Do you know what? Kevin’s in here to buy the last one’. She said, ‘I don’t have all of them!’. I said, ‘Well, Kevin does’, and she went, ‘But I want them!’. We left that store, and about 2 minutes later this young girl came up and said, ‘Look Kevin, I got them!’, and he smiled.
I said, ‘Look! You are the same as Kevin. You have the same DVDs’, and off she went and toddled off with her mum. That is story 1.
Cecilia was sitting at home saying, ‘Sarina, I really would like to learn how to drive’. Rather than saying, ‘Ce, your eyesight’s not great and you’re not going to be able to drive’ we looked at how we could have this happen.
In Kilsyth there is an off-road part where you can drive with a driving instructor who has dual-control. She got in and around she went. She got out and said, ‘I can’t do that! That was too hard’. Then about a month later she said, ‘Do you know what? I want to give that another try’. We said, ‘Okay then, give it another try’. And she did. She got out and said, ‘You know what? As much as I think I can drive, I can’t. I don’t have good eyesight, and I’m too scared, and I would be dangerous to me and everyone else’. I went, ‘Good call, love — but was it good to find out?’. She said, ‘It’s important to find out’.
Mr FOARD — This is part of the dignity of risk, which we were earlier talking about.
Ms BUNNETT — It is as unique as people, so you need to address that situation as it arises.
Mr FOARD — I think building the resilience of people is no different. People are people are people. We all need to develop our resilience at different points of time, and staff work very hard to ensure that everything we do is done in a respectful way. That gives people a sense of self-esteem and pride, and that can counterbalance someone’s negative attitudes that they will encounter from time to time, just as we all encounter things that test our resilience from time to time.
Ms SMITH — People are out and about, doing things in the community. It gives a natural motivation of people’s respect. We actually do not see people with disabilities as — people are doing stuff, and we think that is the best of the — —
Mr FOARD — People will walk away from today’s experience feeling good about themselves. Michael and
Rhiannon or anyone who is present will know that they have participated in something that is important, that their views were conveyed and they were able to take part in what is a broadly defined political process. By continuing to do that on a daily basis you build people’s resilience and sense of self, and that helps.
Mrs COOTE — I would like to thank everybody. Forget about the ones at the table — I would like to say thanks to everybody for coming today! I see some good friends, and I must admit that from before and being out at Melba I just want to say how nice it is to see everybody here, Rhiannon and Michael particularly. I am really interested in the work you do. I would love to see what it has been for myself. We were talking before about Tracy and the work she does.
Ms LEWIS-LANSDELL — You should have a look at the DVD.
Mrs COOTE — I have not had a chance to look at the DVD, but when I went out to Melba I saw the DVD.
She was doing a really important job with looking after the children’s toys and the kindergarten at school, which is great. I have mentioned it to this committee, so they know about Tracy.
I was very keen to pick up on a point Rhiannon made before about going and living in the community and being able to live by yourself. I would like to ask: what about housing availability? You know my feelings about the group homes — and I do not even like the name ‘group home’ — but what about the availability of enabling people to find a house in the community and going further with more ISPs and the NDIS coming along? What sort of a challenge do you feel that is going to be, particularly in your region?
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Mr FOARD — It is no doubt a really big challenge. We do not want to get away from that, but one of the things we suggested in our submission to take the next logical step is that there has been a consensus that giving people choice and providing people with individualised funding is the way to go. It has been part of Victoria’s proud past for about 20 years now, when Futures for Young Adults first began. We have not yet done that with respect to accommodation, however. At the moment government provides organisations like us with funding and says, ‘We want you to provide accommodation to four or five or six people living in a group home with the funds you receive’. Funding does not go to individuals to allow them to exercise choice, and I think that will be a great driver of additional supply — if people can take funding that is rightfully theirs and make decisions about whether they want to live in a group home or if they would like to live somewhere else.
Cecilia actually rents privately in the market. She is able to do that. She works, as you will see in the DVD, at
Coles and at a hairdresser, and she supplements her income that way and can afford to do that. We as an organisation have made a commitment to contribute what limited funds we have that we raise through other means to increasing housing supply, and if people then have the option of saying, ‘Yes, I would like to live in a unit by myself’, or, ‘I would like to live with my future spouse or perhaps a sibling or a close friend’, that is going to improve their quality of life. That will increase their social inclusion, and it will help drive additional supply in the future.
Other initiatives we have seen in the past — the Disability Housing Trust was specifically put in place to try to address some of that supply shortage. That was something we commend. Stavros and Margot would not be living in a unit now without that initiative.
Ms LEWIS-LANSDELL — Where do they live — Stavros and Margot?
Mr FOARD — They live quite a long way away. They actually live in Dandenong, so it is not close to where we work from, but nevertheless that is their home.
As an organisation we are willing to put funds forward, and if we had more time, we would take a look at our plans and work with the local church and our local community bank to make that a possibility, drawing on, as I say, funds we are able to commit that are not government funds. Our aim is to provide people with more housing choice, and I think there are other organisations that would similarly do that if government policy allowed people to exercise choice in a way that, sadly, they cannot at the moment.
Mrs COOTE — Thank you very much indeed.
Mr MADDEN — Mine is sort of an extension of that. What do you think governments, whether they be federal, state or local governments, could do to assist you in the work you do?
Mr FOARD — I think there is a real opportunity for government to say, ‘Social inclusion is fundamentally important, and we are going to make decisions based on the government’s assessed view of whether organisations are serious about increasing social inclusion’. I said to you at the outset, and Sal talked about it, that there should be an expectation that organisations like ours are measuring outcomes and working hard to improve people’s level of social inclusion and allowing people to exercise choice so that in decisions that governments make this is a key criterion. It has not been in the past, but it can be in the future. If you are serious about it, you say, ‘This is one of the bases on which we are going to make decisions on who receives funding or who receives government support in other ways’. The commissioning processes that government runs should absolutely take that into consideration, along with the other important considerations.
Ms LEWIS-LANSDELL — I have got something to say before we leave. I enjoy Melba because they support me and they support everyone. I hope that everyone enjoys us. Thank you for all coming today.
Goodbye.
The CHAIR — Thank you, Rhiannon.
Mrs COOTE — About working with the local government in a holistic approach in with the community, I know that your IGA and a number of the other local organisations are very supportive. Are you backed up by parents and a broader network, such as other community groups and local council, everybody working in a holistic way? Is that part of your approach as well?
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Ms FOARD — In our view it absolutely fits within the notion of social capital. We are looking for as many opportunities as we can to assist people to be included in community life. One of the KPIs that we measure as an organisation is the number of businesses with whom we have productive and supportive relationships of one sort or another. They may be financially supportive. They may be someone like the IGA that gets up and supports Ron and has included him for nine and a half years. There are all sorts of ways that local businesses and organisations can connect with us and connect with the people we support. As I say, it is one of our KPIs.
We look to increase that number over time because we know it helps with social inclusion and it helps with the quality of life of the people who we support.
Mrs COOTE — Thank you.
The CHAIR — On behalf of the committee, I thank you all for coming before the inquiry today. I also thank everybody in the room for joining us. It is important for us to hear from you about the great work that you are doing and about the performance outcome measurement that you are undertaking as well. We really appreciate you being here today. Thank you very much.
Mr FOARD — Thank you again for the opportunity.
Witnesses withdrew.
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