I WISH to add my voice to the call for a task force to investigate the lack of supported accommodation in Bendigo for intellectually disabled people.
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My own son has multiple disabilities: he suffers from frontal lobe brain damage, causing him to panic and respond to any implied criticism or pressure with extreme verbal abuse, he also has autistic behaviours, diabetes and suffers from extreme depression, he is frequently agitated and threatens suicide.
To live a safe and decent life in our affluent society, he needs constant care, adequate supervision and support, all of which are not available to him in Bendigo currently.
As his mother and primary carer my own health is deteriorating and this threatens my ability to maintain the support I give him currently. These health issues mean that I frequently find difficulty in driving to help him.
His father died last year and my husband, who is 81, suffers from Leukaemia. We simply cannot continue the level of support we have maintained in the years since he came to Bendigo from Warrnambool in 2002. For this period we have desperately searched for a similar level of care and accommodation that he experienced previously but with no success.
My son lives alone due to the fact that we are not able to live with his abusive behaviour without our own emotional stability, and our ability to support him at all, being threatened.
But he is very much at risk, he is unable to make decisions for himself, will overreact to challenges and is suicidal. This means that by being consistently alone he is put in a very vulnerable position.
Without a calm organised household where he can be properly supervised, he responds to challenges as if he is being threatened personally and this response causes him to be discriminated against in the way he lives his life and the care that he desperately needs.
His behaviour towards the staff we have organised to see to his needs, his medication, preparation for work, his dietary needs and his personal hygiene is frequently abusive and in response they will often leave him without medication or the support that is necessary to any level of well-being. We believe that in a group situation where there are more people around the staff would have more security and so would he.
Any possibility for him to be included in community events and programs is limited by this situation. His potential to contribute to the community can be facilitated if he has enough support. Currently, his ability to travel to work and programs is compromised by his behaviour. Several taxi drivers here in Bendigo refuse to carry him and he often waits for up to, and over, an hour for one to pick him up to take him to his programs.
In Warrnambool he was able to share a unit with two other men and supervision for the three men was constant. This meant that he was supported and prepared when he went out. He was able to share taxis and was adequately prepared for whatever was ahead. This is surely a standard that can be achieved again!
Whilst we support any moves to examine and remedy the lack of supported accommodation in Bendigo, we fear it will not be in time for the ageing carers amongst us who have continued to care for their much-loved family members for 40 to 50 years. In their eighties, they need help now. It really is a ticking time bomb, who will pick up the pieces when parents can no longer cope?
After ten years of searching for appropriate accommodation for my son, we were part of establishing the committee of parents and carers that is Quality Living Options Bendigo and with the support of other parents in similar situations and the community of Bendigo, we hope to work toward adding our own solution, building a community where our sons and daughters can live happily with the vital support that is not available to them at the moment.
Please join us in our search for answers by visiting our website - www.qlo.org.au.
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