Kathleen Funchion: Warns Compensation May Be Needed for Change

Thanks very much. I just want to raise one or two things myself, Dr Muldoon. First of all, I know it has been said, but genuinely we appreciate you coming in and this report and the work in general. I have always found a very proactive approach from the Children's Ombudsman's Office and it is very much needed because unfortunately I find, and I am sure a lot of people will agree, it seems like if you are a child with an additional need that you are nearly a second-class citizen in terms of it is a acceptable to wait for a school place, it is acceptable to have to wait for resource hours or for, especially in rural areas, transport. Everything is a battle and parents will say that and then you have situations where, you know, some parents may be able to take on that battle but not every parent can and I think there is a small reference to that in your report that, you know, if you have maybe the capabilities of putting in a complaint and an appeal, but people do get worn down by that and it seems like it is paperwork after paperwork, so I suppose we welcome this report even though it is difficult reading in the sense that it is terrible to think that in 2020 this is where children with additional needs are, but it also does need to be highlighted and it does need to be addressed, so in that regard it is welcome. I just wanted to ask you again in relation to, there are two kind of points I want to raise, in relation to the HICWA comment that you made earlier, do they give any reason in that letter as to why, and maybe you cannot go into that, and I respect that if you cannot, but it just seems again there is another example of second-class citizens, you know, children with additional needs that straight away it is not going to be considered, and that is one thing I wanted to ask. The other thing is, on page three I think of your opening statement where you say the amendment of section 18 to expand the powers of the disability appeals officer to provide compensation as a remedy for breaches under the Act, I am wondering are we going to have to get to that stage really before we see any real progress, because at the end of the day it is money, it is when you have to pay out money that people actually unfortunately sit up and pay attention, and it should not have to get to that stage, but it would seem like it would, and I can think of so many people that could potentially fall into that category if that was the case, I just wanted to see what you think about that, and I suppose just finally to make the point that, you know, we all get so many representations from parents who are just heartbroken trying to get an assessment in need, trying to get occupational therapy, speech and language, ASD class places, it is overwhelming really, and I just kind of want to thank the members for their their contributions today, a lot of important points were touched in relation to housing, I thought that was an excellent point, because we often have a battle with local authorities around children with autism, you know, there might not be, you know, a need for a wheelchair ramp or something, but children need space, and they need, you know, maybe their own room, or, you know, I can't think of the word of it now, but basically like, kind of a breakout room or a room where it's, it's, it's, I can't think of the word, but, you know, I can't think of it, but, you know, like, that is just as important, and sometimes that's dismissed by local authorities, so I suppose just, I think it's great that we had the opportunity to raise these things today, but my specific two questions, I suppose, are around, if you can, the HICWA letter, and the other one then just around, you know, are we going to, I think we will have to get to a stage where there is a financial compensation before we actually see changes, Yes, thank you very much, Chair, and again, thank you for hosting this, this meeting and inviting us, just to look at the financial penalty, and I'll hand you over to a colleague in relation to HICWA, the financial penalty again, for me, that I even struggled with putting it into the recommendations, because I felt there was such a draconian, old fashioned way of doing things, that you have to use a stick to get some sort of compliance and moving forward, but certainly, if that's the way we have to do it, we say, we find we're putting penalties of x number of million every year instead of diverting that penalties to or that those millions to making the system work i think that's fine if that's if that's what we need to do for a certain period of time but again it's it's it's a shame that we have to even think that way um you know i think from our point of view it's uh we should be well passed we should be progressive we should be future thinking we should be future proofing these these systems we should be the it should be no question as to whether the the child will get what they need and get it in the time that's already on the legislative books you know um instead of as i said before instead of spending money to fight parents or go to the high court just to get an assessment need in the time that they the law says it should do we should be diverting that money to creating resources and funding those sort of resources so from my point of view the financial penalty if it works i'd be delighted um and it'd be a shame that it does work but anything that makes this moves things forward and makes it less intractable uh would be a positive i'll hand you over to my colleague dr collie then relation to the hickor just give you an outline on that thanks um thank you just in relation to um the hicko standards our understanding is that the principal reason why and the standards um aren't going to be developed or new standards aren't going to be developed is primarily related to capacity and resources available and to hickor and they can obviously speak for their own process but they have a prioritization process in terms of deciding um which types of new standards to develop and when to do so and and consideration was given to our suggestion uh that new standards should be developed in relation to assessment of need in the context of that process and i suppose one of the issues i'd say in relation to that is that as you'll be familiar there are existing standards and that have been in existence uh since 2007 but there seems to be a broad consensus that the standards are outdated and that they're too generalized that they're not aligned with hickor's current methodology for standards and that in some cases they're factually inaccurate the difficulty we have is that they're the only standards we have so despite their flaws they're what we've got and and they can't be retired as we understand it until new standards are put in place so we're in a funny situation really and and in a sense what it comes down to i think is around the importance of standards i mean standards are there to do various things and but one of the very important things they do i think is establish clarity around what's expected and so services know what they're expected to do and families parents and children know what they're entitled to expect from services and so it's a real problem that there are in a sense that there aren't going to be new standards developed allowing that the existing standards are widely regarded as deficient okay thanks very much