Disability provider hit by strikes as funding gap bites

Workers have walked off the job at Victoria’s largest disability housing provider, despite other operators brokering new workplace deals to reign in costs while trying to secure the homes for hundreds of vulnerable residents.

Staff at 35 Scope homes walked off the job on Friday under in an escalation of protected industrial action. The Health and Community Services Union also rallied at the disability provider’s Hawthorn headquarters.

Three of the other private providers charged with operating Victoria’s government-owned supported independent living (SIL) services have recently negotiated new pay deals to close a funding gap that threatens the homes of almost 2000 disabled residents, but Scope has yet to reach an agreement.

More than 80 of the 549 SIL homes transferred by the state government to five private disability housing providers have already closed, and the future of the remaining services has been in doubt since the government subsidies ended on January 1 and the National Disability Insurance Agency refused to cover the resulting funding shortfall.

In a statement to The Age, Scope said it was continuing to negotiate with employees, aiming to strike a deal that will put workers at its government-owned homes on the same agreement as those working at all other services.

Scope has also begun selling off its fleet of specialist vehicles and asking its 1300 disabled residents to fund taxis other services from their NDIS allocations, under a new transport plan it says brings it into line with the wider sector.

“The enterprise agreement, funding discussions regarding Victorian government-owned supported
independent living homes, and transport arrangements are distinct issues, but each reflects the
broader challenge of delivering sustainable, high-quality disability services in a changing funding
and NDIS environment,” the Scope statement said.

“More broadly, Scope continues to advocate for pricing arrangements that would more appropriately reflect the support needs of people with complex disability and the cost of delivering these high-quality services.”

HACSU Victorian branch secretary Paul Healey accused Scope of undermining workers and disabled residents, calling on the federal and state government to urgently intervene before more homes were closed.

“This is the same company that has shut approximately 45 houses and are proposing to remove all of the transport options for people with disability who live in their group homes… Workers aren’t stupid, and they’re not copping it,” Healey said.

The Victorian government transferred the operation of its 549 disability homes to the five private providers – Scope, Aruma, Melba, Life Without Barriers and Possability – from 2016, as the National Disability Insurance Scheme was introduced.

But because those homes also came with pre-existing public service workplace agreements that demand higher wages, staff ratios and standards of care than are covered under NDIS payments, the Victorian government agreed to provide the private operators with $2.1 billion in subsidies for eight years.

Those subsidies ended on January 1, accelerating the closure of homes and forcing many vulnerable residents to find other, cheaper to run, accommodation.

Aruma, Melba and Life Without Barriers recently reached deals with their workers and HACSU, which ended the more generous conditions of their old government industrial agreement but helped keep the homes open.

Possibility is yet to reach a new workplace agreement and refused to discuss negotiations or the viability of its government-owned services when contacted last week.

Melba CEO Melissa Webster said its new pay agreement, which removes the higher staff costs at its Victorian government-owned homes, would help keep many open, though some ageing state-owned buildings still presented issues.

“A high number of those transfer homes are viable, and we also have other homes that are facing challenges,” Webster said.

“The sector is facing challenges as a whole, and that’s what we’re trying to problem-solve, together with government and with people supported to look at a solution.

“I wouldn’t say that everybody wants to move out of those transferred old homes. There’s a lot of people that want to remain in them, as a lot of people love living within them and see them as their homes.”

Under its wider NDIS reforms, the federal government is evaluating whether to introduce supported independent living commissioning, where the government would take a more active role in how services are planned, funded, delivered, and checked at participants’ homes.

Webster believes SIL commissioning may offer a further lifeline to maintain the funding and services for those with more complex needs who were living in Victoria’s state government-owned homes and have transferred to private providers’ care.

“We strongly believe that should there be SIL commissioning in the future. That that might be an opportunity for these transferred homes and services to be able to have the safeguards and supports needed within those individual services,” she said.

“From conversations that we’re having, both at federal and state level, that there’s a full commitment to trying to look at how it can work, and there’s definitely a recognition for the transferred services and those old DFFH [Department of Families, Fairness and Housing] homes to be recognised.”

In a last-ditch effort to save 55 homes it claimed were no longer viable, Aruma in January applied to the Fair Work Commission to tear up a workplace agreement for staff at services transferred to it by the Victorian government.

Aruma CEO Dr Martin Laverty this week confirmed it had since reached a deal with HACSU to end conditions of tied to the old government industrial agreement, reducing the funding gap and increasing the viability of most of its trasferred homes.

Laverty said 10 of Aruma’s Victorian government-owned homes had recently closed, with residents now living in new purpose-built homes.

“The end of both the subsidy and the state government industrial agreement was a major upheaval. Regrettably, this will be followed by NDIS reforms requiring every resident to undergo a new NDIS eligibility assessment, a new NDIS support needs assessment, as well as likely cuts to their community access supports,” Laverty said.

“I’ve proposed the federal government either exempt or take a light-touch approach to require disability home residents to prove, again, their eligibility for the NDIS.”