New system for funding disabled

Press, 26 October 1989, Page 6

New system for funding disabled

By

PATRICK McLENNAN

Disabled people will have direct access to funding for community-based services after the Government’s announcement yesterday it will no longer make bulk grants available.

The Minister of Sociaal Welfare, Dr Cullen, said last evening the Cabinet had instead decided on a demand-driven care-subsidy approach. Dr Cullen made the announcement at a meeting of the Templeton Hospital Parents’ Association, at Templeton Hospital. Funding would soon be available direct to all individuals according to their level of disability. Dr Cullen criticised bulk-grant funding as "lacking in responsiveness to client needs.” When one organisation controlled all community-based services, such as the I.H.C. or area health boards, there was a risk of excessive power being placed in the organisation’s hands and too little in the client’s.

Organisations providing health care — and area health boards would be just one of those — would be contracted to the Social Welfare Department to provide

defined services, Dr Cullen said. “If an individual moves from one service-provider to another, the funding will move with him or her. This promotes consumer choice.”

Dr Cullen said if the appropriate people wished to set up an alternative community-based service they could obtain the funding. He emphasised the process of “normalisation” of people in in; stitutions would not be forced oh them.

A number of parents expressed concern that Dr Cullen had misinterpreted places like Templeton Hospital, which were, in fact, accepting communities. Normalisation did not simply mean dumping people from large hospitals into suburbia and it had nothing to do with cost-cutting, said Dr Cullen. The move towards communitybased care meant ensuring they had enough medical and physical services to exist in the commun-

tty. Dr Cullen said the Auckland Area Health Board’s recent proposed transfer of severely handicapped patients from North Shore Hospital to the community was a “public relations disaster.” The process of implementation of normalisation would not be easy, but that “fiasco” had dented the public’s confidence in it as a principle. The board had apologised to patients and parents for the alarm caused and relations had improved, he said. Dr Cullen told the meeting the then Minister of Health, Mr Caygill' last year released what was in effect a charter for the care of people with intellectual disabilities.

He compared it to the new Children’s, Young Person’s and their Families Act, and said perhaps the Social Welfare Department needed to adopt similar principles to protect the rights of those with disabilities.