You are suggesting that accommodation models must be regulated and may not be left to the consumer to decide. In other words, academics like yourself know better than families who have cared for their person for decades. We see all around us people with a cognitive level of a six or seven year old left with minimum drop-in support. And we see group homes where unimaginable abuse and neglect are rife. This is the brave new world of "social inclusion". We say we want something better for our people - we are going to choose the most appropriate housing for our particular person because we know best what our person wants. We are not going to be dictated to by the 'experts' who in the past have told us what to do and how to live. You are saying that we may have choice, as long as our choice fits with what you have decided is permissible.

I commend Christine for exposing the fact some people with disabilities may be excluded because of housing restrictions. There are many people with disabuilities hwo need cluster housing and it is not popular with the bureaucrats. We now have nearly 200 people with intellectual disabilities in Gaol simply because some are repeat offenders because they steal from shops, etc. These people should be freed into gated communities where they have quality fo life with very few restricctions. This is just one example. The DHS has a protocol for these residents with the Office of corrections. There are others who are confined to living at home all their lives with nowhere to go when th eparent dies. Simply because cluster housing is not acceptable. Many people have high support needs and five bed house in a cluster could be built to house these people. Cluster hosuing is the only option for some and there are a group of people with disabilities on the Peninsula who want this style of housing because they want to be together with their friends. It is a disgrace that every one of us can choose how we live but people with intellectual disabilities who are supposed to have rights are not allowed to choose for themselves.
Stephy

I find this very interesting.

All Ozzies are expected to pay high taxes because those with a disability are "entitled" to support that matches their need.

Just a little unfair don't you think, when many of those taxpayers do not have sufficient to match their needs, even though in many cases there are 2 people working to try to achieve that end.

Once upon a time we supported ourselves, & our families, then, if we had any to spare, we generously supported those less well off than ourselves. Now we are expected to pay for everyone else's needs first, & satisfy ours, only if there is any money left.

For gods sake, that idiot Gillard wants to tax us to save the planet, I wonder if it has a disability.

So Christine, perhaps you could go to the back of the Que, & wait to see if we can afford any more charity. Or is your idea to drive us all into bankruptcy, so you can have a bigger & better welfare sector for your graduates to play with.

I think there should be a variety of different housing types built into the housing stock that can be offered to people with various disabilities. There should be a surplus of this stock to allow for maximum consumer choice; consumer choice being the choice of the disabled person concerned, or their immediate family in the event that the disabled person cannot communicate and comprehend their choices for themselves. The remainder of the stock can be either reallocated to other people on the public housing list or be let out to the private market as is the case with some community housing projects in Melbourne where I used to live.

My understanding of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities is that this instrument along with other instruments the government has signed and ratified support and encourage individual choice and autonomy. That choice and autonomy is not limited by an assessment of a so called "expert".

I'm sorry Christine but I cannot see how someone who is an academic not a person with a disability or a long term carer should have any say in where our disabled people live, you speak as though a building where someone lives can determine their lifestyle that is simly not true.It is the level of care and support that a person recieves that enables them to participate in society and have a quality of life.
Most people who don't have a disability choose who they wish to live with and socialise with why not give people with a disability the same choices.
In an ideal world people would not become disabled but we don't live in an ideal world do we, so keep your ideology to yourself and allow the people who have loved and cared for their people for decades to know best what it is that they want

For nearly 60 years parents of people with disabilities - in particular intellectual disabilities- have begun, built and fought for services for their loved ones. These include but are not limited to education, work places, recreation and supported accommodation. The fight continues to this day with parent-led initiation of the NDIS to find a solution to the horrendous neglect in funding services - particularly for supported accommodation. We finally go through the process, get bipartisan support, individual funding, and then the academics and "advocates" again put their noses in to tell us what we need. Well we have had it. Why do they think they know our sons and daughters better than parents? What right do they have to undermine this one opportunity Australians with disabilities have for funding support?
We are not saying there is anything wrong with isolated houses if that is what suits the people living there. We are saying that our people want and need to live in their own communities with their friends and with proper professional support. Too many of the people in isolated houses only get minimal drop-in support, and that does NOT suit everyone.
Governments now approve, indeed encourage, a variety of models - as it should be.
What are you people afraid of? That we will be proved right? For whom are “advocacy groups” advocating? Certainly not my son or the thousands of others I know across Australia.

This article gives an insight into the 21st century thinking of the 'we know best brigade’ when it comes to people with intellectual disability, particularly those who are severely and profoundly so. In fact the mindset on display here is almost indistinguishable from that of the 'we know best brigade' of the late 18th, 19th and 20th century. A mindset which in fact gave rise to the large residential institutions wherein so many people with disabilities were incarcerated and de-humanised, but deemed in their best interests by the 'we know best brigade' of the day.

I cannot imagine such a piece being written with respect to people with physical disability who are able to make choices as to where, with whom, and in which of the myriad 21st century permutations of residential accommodation they choose to reside.

In the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities there is no clear declaration that disability is a perfectly legitimate state of being which, in my view, makes the Convention foundationally flawed at first instance. However, that said, when speaking of residential accommodation article 19 says people with disability should have the same choices and options in relation to residential accommodation as is available to the general population. There is no, “however”, in Article 19 , that excludes people with intellectual disability from having those same options and choices.

Thanks for the warning Professor Bigby but parents and families of people with disabilities are not the enemy of good sense. In fact history attests to the fact that it has invariably been parents and families of people with disabilities who have been in the vanguard of disability reform and fiercely so. The first Ombudsman was established because of the activism in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s of parents and families of people with disabilities.

Ultimately it falls to our political leaders to lead the community on the issue of disability reform. Attitude reflects leadership and Hasbeen who has posted previously gives a clue to where the failings are in our leadership.

Footnotes / references, Prof Bigby?

Thank you for a timely and illuminating article. As a person with a significant disability, an academic, experience in advocacy, advocacy development, policy advice, in disability services and in protective adult guardianship jurisdictions, I wholeheartedly concur with Professor Bigby. Her comments are backed by an extensive body of research and practice and I wish more people with her background would speak up publicly about this NDIS proposal as driven by a market-based belief system that cannot deliver the social inclusion goal that the National Disability Strategy aims for. It is precisely because of a continued ignorance about the human needs of people with disabilities, such as expressed in some comments here, that we need something much better than the present proposal. Based on values that support Good Lives of people with disabilities. The irony is that at its core achieving them depends on a much greater generosity of spirit, and grasp of social justice than appears prevalent. A civil, sustainable society depends on our full inclusion and if you let us than this would be our contribution to a greater wellbeing for all. Prof Bigby is wrong on one score: the Commission's report is not silent on integrated or segregated support. It says that which to adopt is to be assessed by their relative cost-effectiveness. Signing the UN Convention is one thing. Understanding its raison d'etre and substance is obviously quite another. We all lose if we think living in a bean counter society is alright for some.

From everything Erik says about himself, it is clear that while he may be a person "with a significant disability", he does not have a severe to profound intellectual disability. Like many members of the community, he therefore may very well have no idea about the particular needs and individual circumstances of people with severe to profound ID. People with severe to profound ID don't go around telling people like Erik what is best for him in his particular individual circumstances, claiming to know solely on the grounds that they are "disabled too", and it would be good if occasionally a similar level of "minding one's own business" could be displayed by people with physical disability towards those with intellectual disability. As for Erik's concerns about people with disability being forced to live in a "bean counter society" - why not? All the rest of us do!