A report released this week by the Health and Disability Commission (HDC) has highlighted five years of complaints about residential disability support services.

Five themes captured the core concerns of complainants — inadequate standard of support and care, deterioration in physical and mental wellbeing, failure to adhere to the funded level of support, unsafe medication management and practices, and use of restraint and force.

Other complaints included a lack of knowledge or understanding about important cultural practices, a lack of choice and input into daily activities, and the management of discretionary income.

“As Aotearoa New Zealand awaits the final report from the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care, the findings of this report are a timely reminder that we cannot view systemic abuse of institutionalised people as only historic,” said Te Kāhui Tika Tangata Human Rights Commission’s Disability Rights Commissioner, Prudence Walker.

“The factors that create fertile ground for abuse are evident in this report. Separation from others, people having so little choice or control in their lives, even over what you eat and who you live with. People with power to ignore, dismiss and discredit your rights, needs and complaints – these are many of the same conditions that allowed the abuse that has led to the Royal Commission of Inquiry,” she said.

“The Royal Commission has heard from many tāngata whaikaha Māori survivors about the effects of neglect and abuse in state care,” adds Rongomau Taketake indigenous rights governance leader, Dayle Takitimu. "We do these survivors a disservice if we don’t hold to account systems and institutions that are still perpetuating the same harms.”

The Human Rights Commission shares the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) Committee’s concerns that New Zealand does not have a comprehensive strategy to move away from institutional settings for disabled people. In 2022, in its periodic reporting on New Zealand, the UNCRPD Committee expressed concern that significant numbers of disabled people still lived in smaller institutional settings, where they experienced violence, abuse, and neglect.

The HDC report notes that, due to various barriers, tāngata whaikaha Māori and Pacific peoples are under-represented in complaints to HDC and so the report can be seen as “the tip of the iceberg”.

However, Walker says she is pleased that Whaikaha Ministry of Disabled People have welcomed the report and committed to careful consideration of the HDC recommendations as well as findings or recommendations contained in the Royal Commission’s report and the Ministry’s own Independent Review into disability support services. The Human Rights Commission will monitor adherence to these commitments alongside the HDC.

The Human Rights Commission echoes HDC’s disappointment that the first phase of the independent review of disability support services did not include disabled people. It supports the calls to ensure that tāngata whaikaha Māori and disability community leaders, family and whānau are closely involved in the next stage of the review, in particular around the development of recommendations.

“We too urge that the review applies the articles and principles of Te Tiriti o Waitangi, the UNCRPD, and Enabling Good Lives to create a framework for recommendations that will ensure a sustainable, high quality, and inclusive disability support system,” Walker said.

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