A high quality disability workforce

People with disability have the right to be safe and receive high quality services.

VCOSS believes that a robust registration and accreditation scheme can help lift quality across the sector, improve safety for people with disability and raise the status of disability caring work to improve pay and grow the workforce. The proposed National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) Quality and Safeguarding Framework includes a number of powers and functions but does not incorporate worker registration and accreditation.

The Victorian scheme can provide an additional level of checks and balances, helping to increase the safety and quality of service delivery.

Registering disability workers in mainstream settings, disability workers providing personal care, and all workers engaged by NDIS providers will provide a basic level of screening to prevent people who have committed violence, abuse or neglect from continuing to provide disability services.

A requirement to abide by ethical standards of practice, and the sanction of being deregistered for professional misconduct will also help deter workers from committing violence, abuse or neglect. This level of scrutiny is particularly crucial at a time when the disability workforce is growing rapidly, combined with large injection of government funding and shift to a market based approaches.