Access: Family Carers Case – Five Years On
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Sacha, in reply to
Link doesn't work for me. Please check.
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Rosemary McDonald, in reply to
Sacha, I got there through the link I posted in my previous comment....
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Sacha, in reply to
Thanks. Works on this computer. Their site must be doing something my older home one doesn't like.
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Thank you, Marilyn Waring, for remembering those of us who count for nothing.
http://www.radionz.co.nz/audio/player/20169982
Marilyn Waring made a point of singling out this particular case.The process was followed, and the assholes in the Beehive not only made the discrimination legal, but removed the right for ANY further complaint.
This shitty piece of legislation was passed on the 17th May 2013.
Peter and I are thinking about marking the second anniversary of this Act....somehow.
We suggested to Catherine Delahunty that something should be done on the first anniversary...but she chose to consult with DPA NZ....and guess what?
Nothing.
If Peter and I have to (yet again) do something on our own....we will.
But, it would be nice to have some support.
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Can't recall what thread this was raised in by Rosemary, but IHC's service arm has just been fined over $150k for letting that 15-year old disabled boy die in the bath.
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Angela Hart, in reply to
and that's something because loss of money forces businesses to take notice. However.. this was manslaughter at the very least, and no-one has been charged with Nathan's death.
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NZ First have noticed that the Misery of Health has only paid out a tenth of its budget for funded family care by making it too hard to get (3 mins, audio).
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Only 187 families signed up. How to set up a policy to fail! At least it has made the news.
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Forcing families to become employers to be eligible is the kind of insane thing you would only do if you really, really wanted the scheme to fail. Bastards.
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Sacha, in reply to
They're trying to minimise the legal risk to themselves by making someone else take it on. There's a long-standing culture of that in the MoH.
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Kumara Republic, in reply to
ACC can be pig-headed too.
And sadly, when ACC denies claims for things like RSI/OOS, it can have a corrosive effect on claimants. It happened over 20 years ago to a close relative, and as a result he's developed something of a Reaganomic view of ACC (about the only Govt institutions he trusts now are the police and military).
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Kumara Republic, in reply to
Further to my point, I am also reminded of this tax evasion case in Britain (my emphasis below).
Twenty years of evading an estimated £1m in tax has landed British sandwich shop owner John Baker in jail for two years.
Unfortunately for Baker, one of two shops, which was operated by his daughter Amy, was around the corner from the local tax office and tax staff had been regular customers for years.
So they knew Amy was lying when, in response to a query about why the business hadn't filed tax returns, she told them it had been operating only since 2010.
The court in Hull heard Baker and his partner had been big spenders in top-end stores such as Louis Vuitton and Harvey Nicholls, and drove expensive cars and took luxury holidays. Ironically, Baker told the court he had stopped paying tax because the government had refused to help him in his "time of need."
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Rosemary McDonald, in reply to
Oh dear!
The terminal cynic in me asks..."why is NZ First bringing this up now?"
However...Barbara Stewart attended the pre election disability bash in Hamilton and actually came across as quite well informed.
NZ First were also very vocal as the House was 'debating' the PHDAct(2) and emphatically voted against it.
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Rosemary McDonald, in reply to
kind of insane thing you would only do if you really, really wanted the scheme to fail. Bastards.
https://gazette.govt.nz/notice/id/2013-go6248
Read this and weep...written by someome who REALLY hates disabled people and their family carers.
My favourite bit is (still) this footnote....
"11 Good faith generally means to discuss with each other any matter which affects the delivery of the disability support services in an open way so that all matters are "on the table", to be active and constructive in establishing and maintaining a good relationship, being responsive, providing information, and not doing anything that might mislead or deceive each other."
Oh! The irony.
Bastards.
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Apologies for digging up this smelly corpse, but I just wanted to deposit a wee bit of information regarding this case, somewhere, safe.
Back …
In May 2007, the Minister of Labour asked NACEW for advice on providing financial support to family members who cared for people experiencing ill-health, disability, mental illness or addiction, or frailty in their old age.
Which they did, and the report was published in March 2008.
The “Atkinson” case headed to the Tribunal in September 2008.
The NACEW report made five recommendations…
The core role of family carers be recognised as providing emotional and associative support, which cannot be easily replaced by formal services.
The best way to support family carers is to complement their core role by ensuring there are comprehensive care services for clients at home, through increasing the quality and quantity of formal care services.
As recommended in NACEW’s report Improving the Quality of Work for Women in the Homecare, Residential and Cleaning Sectors, improving the quality of the formal services provided in the home requires the precariousness of employment in this sector to be addressed.
That care plans and packages be based on the level of client need, not on assumptions of the availability of family care.
That clients and family carers, in consultation with funders, can opt for some aspects of care packages to be undertaken, for pay, by family carers.and, according to the document I’m quoting from, the report would be published in the Family Care New Zealand magazine…the magazine published by the MOH/MSD funded Carers NZ.
I do not recall this report being highlighted in Family Care NZ…but I do recall that Carers NZ did not support family carers of those with high and very high care needs being paid a wage.
Which is weird, as the report, the one funded by the government, actually does recommend that for the group that “Atkinson” involves…
The payment would be made for explicit roles required within customised client care
plans. Family carers could have other paid employment. The only requirement for a
family member to receive payment for care work would be that they provide the
designated services. The arrangement is most likely to occur when the care need is
long-term and predictable, as in the case of a person with tetraplegia, or short-term and
intensive, such as the care of someone who is terminally ill.Now…NACEW __was__under the auspices of the good old Department of Labour, which was absorbed by MOBIE. MOBIE didn’t want NACEW, and sent all NACEW’s stuff over to the Ministry of/for Women.
Somewhere, in transit, the report “Financial support for family carers.” (and it’s recommendation that the family carers of those with high and very high care needs be paid as other ‘formal’ carers) was lost.
Cyber oblivion.
But I had a copy on file.
Which, I sent to the nice lady at the MOW so the NACEW publications database can be made more complete.
She sent me, as I requested, (because I could not find it on the NACEW database, although there were Annual Reports from other years) the NACEW Annual Report for 2007/2008…which mentions the missing report AND shows that the lead Crown Lawyer who argued against paying family carers of those with high and very high care needs…with no small amount of vehemency… was a Ministerial Appointee on the government funded committee that recommended that these family members should be paid.
Funny how this report…which is actually quite accurately describes the situation for (mostly) women with family care obligations and discusses the issues with ‘formal’ care and is well referenced is not mentioned by either side in the ensuing court cases.
It could be an oversight. Or could it be a bit embarrassing to have the lead antagonist in the hearings associated with a document that debunks her entire case?
It must be so mentally exhausting running with the hare and hunting(aggressively) with the hounds.
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Oops! I broke the PA word limit again...here is the report I refer to above..
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Funded Family Care policy has been updated on the MoH website. There is some significant change. Anyone receiving FFC should read through the policy, not just the summary.
http://www.health.govt.nz/system/files/documents/publications/funded-family-care-operational-policy-mar16.pdf -
Another few hours of grave digging and I have found an on-line version of a speech that Ruth Dyson did in October 2001.
Relevance? Largely historical, but she does talk about the NASC system..
I’m getting very inconsistent messages about NASC around the country, including the message that for many, NASC is the main obstacle to people receiving good services rather than the entry point.
No shit, Sherlock. I wonder if Ruth realises the NASCs are worse now?
In practice, however, the concept is becoming increasingly unworkable. The process is inconsisent, and is being used as a budget manager. As NASC provider Lorna Sullivan described it recently, it has become "a gateway to limited resources", where needs "are defined from within a very limited range of possibilities identified on a standardised assessment tool".
Ho hum.
Then it gets interesting, she talks about the brandspanking new NZ Disability Strategy and how
Already it is changing the way that government departments, local authorities, service providers, NGOs and people with disabilities themselves think and work.
And since she is addressing a parents group, she talks about Objective 15, the one about valuing family and whanau, and how...
·there is debate around responsibility for caring, payment for caring and how to further recognise and value the caring role.
On this last point, you may be interested to know that I have set up an inter-departmental group to review the government's policy regarding families who apply to be paid caregivers for family members.
She reminds listeners of the impending expiry
of the government's exemption under Section 151 of the Human Rights Act at the end of 2001,
and the recent Complaints Review Tribunal decision regarding Allan and Gene Hill's complaint against the IHC and Health Funding Authority.
As you are no doubt aware, the tribunal's decision acknowledged the rights of family members, including parents, to apply to be paid caregivers for one or more of their family.
The inter-departmental group is being led by the new Ministry of Social Development, and includes officials from ACC, Health, Social Services and Employment, and Child, Youth and Family.
It will look at the criteria used by all government departments and agencies when funding caregivers, and come up with recommendations which, I hope, are fair and consistent across the board. Again, I would be very interested to hear your views.
That was 2001.
NACEW released their report in early 2008.
The case went to the Human Rights Review Tribunal in September 2008.
Labour could have fixed this before they lost the election.
I remember this case working its way through the Human Rights Review Tribunal way back when I worked for the HRC, with the Crown Law reps cock-blocking all the way. Mad bitchfacing action. And that was under Labour. I seem to recall (happy to stand corrected) that they threatened even then to just bypass the Tribunal result with legislation. So much for our democratic recall. Fuck this fucking bullshit.
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I wonder what the budget holds for family carers this time?
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Rosemary McDonald, in reply to
Well, after the wee exchange in the House the other day between Auntie Annette and Uncle Jonathon, I'd say don't hold your breath for any/much extra for HCSS for under 65s. The Aged Care sector is where it is at...and they have a bigger voting block so no one will want to upset them.
The Home Care sector is in some strife if this report is anything to go on.
Demand up.
Wages low.
Staff turnover high.
All that drive to up skill carers doing their level 1,2 and 3 is mostly for naught as service providers have cut costs to maintain their profit margins by NOT paying the workers who have done the courses.
Actually an interesting piece of work that...as it does echo the 'means testing' for home based care (which at the moment is sacrosanct) which the Treasury Report "Long term Care..." floats.
There is a growing
demand for home and
community support
services in an already
stretched sector which is
placing additional financial
pressure on fundersTaking steps to reduce demand by, for example, changing
service eligibility policy/rules.• The scope of services required to be delivered could be
altered to reduce staff workload and /or cost.• Capping service levels or the scope of services so that clients
must pay for additional services. This could potentially be
means-tested.• Incentivise “unpaid” family care of elderly residing with family
via a tax credit.Delloitte did this work in 2015, in response to providers' concerns over current funding sustainability.
Closer inspection shows the whole thing is a mess, with variable budget allocations for ACC, MOH and DHB as well as regional variations...which make no sense.
A cynic might suggest that there has been a deliberate plan to render the entire system dysfunctional... in order to justify the government handing the sector over to some multinational company specialising in administering taxpayer funded disability and age care.
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Sacha, in reply to
Fuck this fucking bullshit.
I miss Keith's blogging, now that he's too busy crunching data. And Tze Ming commenting, now she's half a world away.
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Rosemary McDonald, in reply to
And Tze Ming commenting, now she’s half a world away.
Having seen some of the 'cockblocking, mad bitchfacing action' while observing the High Court and Appeal Court hearings in 2010-11 (at one point I flounced out...slamming the courtroom door behind me (difficult, because they have those anti-slammy hinges) it was like a validation. The plaintiffs were subject to the same shit.
I wanted to reach through the screen and give Tze Ming a hug for saying that.Keith's post on this issue was GOLD.
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Sacha, in reply to
most New Zealanders have no idea how outrageous this stuff is - so yes, hug the ones who get how loudly to shout I say (if they're into it).
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Who wouldn't be into it???
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Family carers are excluded from the equity settlement being put in place for the mainly female caregiver workforce. Cliff Robinson covers it quite well in this interview with John Campbell http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/checkpoint/audio/201840857/anger-at-exclusion-from-new-caregiver-pay-rise
It stinks even more badly when you consider that there are only 300 or so families on FFC at the moment- it wouldn't have added much to the cost to include them. The Government seriously does not value their work, the message is loud and clear.
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