The Community Visitors Scheme also incorporates network members who play a significant role in facilitating collaboration, information sharing and training for the scheme’s auspices in their jurisdictions. According to Department of Health guidance material, the responsibilities of visitors include: notifying the scheme’s auspice coordinator of any accident or incident that occurs while visiting reporting unsafe visiting environments exercising a duty of care at all times. A volunteer visitor cannot become involved in investigating or following up complaints. If a visitor becomes concerned some aspect of a resident’s care, they should seek advice from their scheme’s auspice coordinator. The auspice is responsible for notifying the provider. a visitor in the scheme has a responsibility to inform the auspice organisation of any concern they may have, there appears to be little guidance for how an auspice should respond to the visitor’s concerns. In some for example when a visitor has not been informed of a resident’s desire for confidentiality, it may be inappropriate for an auspice to report the visitor’s concerns to the provider. In addition, the matter may be further complicated where the auspice organisation is also the provider of care. We note the findings of the ALRC report into abuse: The Department of Health (Cth) should develop national guidelines for the community visitors scheme. The guidelines should include policies and procedures for visitors to follow if they have concerns about abuse or neglect of care recipients. We note that a range of sectors in the states and territories also have official visitor schemes that focus on advocacy and rights protection for vulnerable people, such as people with disability, children in care, and people in mental health services. A consumer peak body remarked on the value of visitors in providing a further safeguard for system quality, drawing the Review’s attention to the ALRC report in respect of an official visitors scheme: In terms of implementing a broader improvement to quality, COTA believes there is merit in exploring an official visitors scheme to achieve greater early warning systems in monitoring and indeed complaint handling. As the ALRC Discussion Paper said, the official visitors scheme would complaints ‘complement and reportable incident schemes, by providing an additional opportunity to identify issues of concern, especially on behalf of those with cognitive or communication disabilities, and those with fewer social supports’. The ALRC concluded that the current should be on continuing to support consumer advocacy services. However, it recognised that an official visitors scheme might be something to be considered in future, depending on a review occurring in the disability sector:
The Community Visitors Scheme also incorporates network members who play a significant role in facilitating collaboration, information sharing and training for the scheme’s auspices in their jurisdictions. According to Department of Health guidance material, the responsibilities of visitors include: notifying the scheme’s auspice coordinator of any accident or incident that occurs while visiting reporting unsafe visiting environments exercising a duty of care at all times. A volunteer visitor cannot become involved in investigating or following up complaints. If a visitor becomes concerned some aspect of a resident’s care, they should seek advice from their scheme’s auspice coordinator. The auspice is responsible for notifying the provider. a visitor in the scheme has a responsibility to inform the auspice organisation of any concern they may have, there appears to be little guidance for how an auspice should respond to the visitor’s concerns. In some for example when a visitor has not been informed of a resident’s desire for confidentiality, it may be inappropriate for an auspice to report the visitor’s concerns to the provider. In addition, the matter may be further complicated where the auspice organisation is also the provider of care. We note the findings of the ALRC report into abuse: The Department of Health (Cth) should develop national guidelines for the community visitors scheme. The guidelines should include policies and procedures for visitors to follow if they have concerns about abuse or neglect of care recipients. We note that a range of sectors in the states and territories also have official visitor schemes that focus on advocacy and rights protection for vulnerable people, such as people with disability, children in care, and people in mental health services. A consumer peak body remarked on the value of visitors in providing a further safeguard for system quality, drawing the Review’s attention to the ALRC report in respect of an official visitors scheme: In terms of implementing a broader improvement to quality, COTA believes there is merit in exploring an official visitors scheme to achieve greater early warning systems in monitoring and indeed complaint handling. As the ALRC Discussion Paper said, the official visitors scheme would ‘complement complaints and reportable incident schemes, by providing an additional opportunity to identify issues of concern, especially on behalf of those with cognitive or communication disabilities, and those with fewer social supports’. The ALRC concluded that the current should be on continuing to support consumer advocacy services. However, it recognised that an official visitors scheme might be something to be considered in future, depending on a review occurring in the disability sector:
review_report_final_23_october_2017.docx