The tragic death of Ann Marie Smith in 2020 shocked all South Australians and shone a light on safeguarding failures for members of our community who are isolated or struggle to have their voices heard.

It prompted the former Marshall Government to appoint a 12-member taskforce to examine gaps in safeguarding for South Australians living with disability.

The taskforce co-chaired by Disability Advocate Dr David Caudrey and former MLC Kelly Vincent clearly identified the lack of state government funding for independent disability advocacy services as one of the safeguarding gaps and recommended this be addressed.

Then Minister for Human Services Michelle Lensink responded in December 2020, granting $1.2 million over three years to Uniting Communities Law Centre to establish a new service.

This was the first time in more than a decade that any South Australian government had funded an independent disability advocacy service, but at a mere $400,000 per year it was widely recognised as just a drop in the ocean of what is needed.

Now, that funding is about to end and the future of disability advocacy in South Australia must be addressed in the upcoming State Budget due to be handed down on 15 June.

South Australia stands apart from all other states in its failure to adequately invest in independent disability advocacy services, which has long been recognised as a shared Commonwealth-State responsibility.

When the former Rann Government abolished funding for these services to save money in 2008, his Minister for Families and Communities, and, later, successor as Premier, Jay Weatherill told an Estimates Committee that disability advocacy should be provided by government.

This overlooked the critical importance of advocacy services being independent of government given that many matters for which people living with disability require advocacy support involve governments or government services.

Some have suggested that the transition to the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) further muddied the waters of Commonwealth-State responsibilities for disability and, therefore, disability advocacy services. In recent years, we have seen various states and territories step back from a number of their responsibilities and seemingly test the extent to which the Commonwealth might step in to fill funding voids, something that the Productivity Commission noted in its 2019 review of the National Disability Agreement.

With the NDIS now embedded in all jurisdictions across the country, federal politicians on both sides of the aisle have become increasingly vocal about the need for the states to step back into the policy areas they should never have vacated.

South Australia stands apart from all other states in its failure to adequately invest in independent disability advocacy services

Most have heeded the message to provide their share of funding for independent advocacy. For example, the former Coalition government in New South Wales had been another to attempt to withdraw its funding for independent advocacy. Facing a significant backlash, the former Berejiklian Government relented and asked the state’s Ageing and Disability Commissioner to review disability advocacy in New South Wales.

The result of that review is the Disability Advocacy Futures Program, which now provides $13 million per year to individual, systemic, and representative independent disability advocacy services across New South Wales.

Quantifying the level of unmet need in South Australia is difficult. However, in its 2017 report on NDIS costs, the Productivity Commission used a per capita extrapolation approach to estimate the level of funding required in each jurisdiction.

In preparing our pre-budget submission to Treasurer Mullighan, JFA Purple Orange applied the same approach to estimate the funding needed in South Australia for independent disability advocacy services at $3.05 million per year.

Unlike the meagre commitment of $400,000 per year to a single Adelaide-based provider, this investment should fund services across the entire state and provide tailored support for the unique needs of specific cohorts including First Nations people living with disability.

Such an investment is critical to the future safeguarding of South Australians living with disability and to prevent any repeat of past tragedies. It is also needed urgently, as recent examples of continued poor outcomes attest.

In January this year, the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission released a report that examined about 7,000 reportable incidents and complaints notified to the Commission regarding supports provided in the disability group homes of seven of the largest providers operating in Australia between 1 July 2018 and 30 September 2022.

At the time, People with Disability Australia president Nicole Lee suggested these statistics were likely “just the tip of the iceberg” of what is happening right now in group homes.

Everyone promised to do better, then attention quickly moved on.

Last year, the Health and Community Services Complaints Commissioner reported on the case of “Mr D” after the South Australian Ambulance Service notified it about his “inadequate care” at the Hampstead Transition to Home (T2H) facility. “Mr D” had been rushed to hospital with paramedics reporting he had “an infected pressure wound, appeared to be malnourished, and was left to sit in faeces and urine for long periods.”

While steps have been taken to improve the program since, it is hard to disagree that a greater presence of, and access to, independent advocates in South Australia may have given voice to the significant shortcomings much sooner.

One of the many benefits of funding dedicated independent disability advocacy services is the sustained focus on the safeguarding of people living with disability and the quality of supports and services they rely on.

As the New South Wales Ageing and Disability Commissioner’s review stated: “Advocacy matters for people with disability, their families, and their carers. Advocacy matters for the quality of our governments, the policies they make, and the services they deliver. Advocacy matters to our community to ensure we create a genuinely inclusive society.”

No doubt South Australia is a parochial state, but the disability community is hoping Treasurer Mullighan looks to New South Wales for inspiration on how to revitalise crucial independent disability advocacy services as he puts the final touches on this month’s State Budget.

Because advocacy matters to us all.

Robbi Williams is CEO of JFA Purple Orange, an independent South Australian social-profit organisation.