Profoundly disabled uniquely vulnerable to Individual Support Package funding rort

A $70,000-a-year rort of taxpayer money is troubling, but a state agency may internally decide to forego a complex and expensive fraud investigation for expediency and effectiveness in serving more clients.

A more significant concern is that Karen never received the essential services the package identified in her funding contract. Every dollar diverted to pay her adoptive mother's house payments, nights out, household expenses and home renovations meant Karen was not receiving her disability services.

As I previously reported, Karen had a placement to study science at the university level and was denied professional services that allowed her to attend; she was never able to take up the offer. Her dream to become a productive, taxpaying member of society was obstructed because her family treated her disability income as her contribution to the family coffers. A key policy oversight is that it is the profoundly disabled who are eligible for the largest packages; and they are also the most vulnerable targets of this mode of family financial abuse. They suffer because they lack the independent ability to speak out against embezzlement and fraud. In the case of Karen, her revelations to legal authorities led to punishment restrictions so severe as to constitute false imprisonment.

Taxpayers suffer in the long term as well. Four years ago, Karen envisioned a day when she could pay for her own staff carers. She had started a viable business and projected an ability to begin that process within five years. Contrast Karen's self-reliant goal with a lifetime taxpayer bill of nearly $5 million (over 20 years) for disability care, with an estimated $1.5 million shortfall through embezzlement.

Policy changes to stop the rorting are simple. Provide the money to families but ensure control over its use. No cash withdrawals; and retention by state authorities to audit the account at will – reviewing invoices for authenticity and bank account transfers to ensure they match. Why should state police resources be called in to investigate something DHS should have prevented using their own policy-making authority?

Since birth, Karen's life has been in the care of the state – first as an adoptee, and then as the recipient of a disability package. But since 2012, her life has become an inhumane prison of silence. Very little progress has been made to rescue Karen from exploitation. When a state employee was presented with evidence of family embezzlement, he remarked that they simply don't have anyone else to take responsibility for Karen's needs. So, they take no action, and Karen continues to suffer in silence.

Karen's case may be one among many. Lessons could be learned from an independent audit of every Individual Support Package cash award since inception. This would not only determine the size and scope of the current problem, but would inform the National Disability Insurance Agency on what risks need to be managed in their own program if cash is given to families without proper financial review protocols firmly in place.

It is an inconvenient truth for government agencies that a serial pest has coercive power to garner a $200,000 cash disability package on behalf of a profoundly disabled family member and then prevent the intended recipient from speaking out. If Karen had not had the intelligence to reach out to legal authorities (repeatedly over a month until she was silenced), no one would have been the wiser. But, she did, and she has suffered irreparable harm as a whistle-blower.

Could anyone reading Karen's story exist for one week without being allowed to speak? Imagine four years in silence. It is, in fact, unimaginable. Every profoundly disabled Australian who is the recipient of an ISP package has the potential to be a target for similar abuse.

Public servants have a difficult job to do. With NDIS about to launch nationwide, the 95% of families who would use the money for its intended purpose should not be tarred with the same brush as the 5% who may abuse the public trust and spend the money on their own personal lifestyles. These rorters need to be identified and stopped. If anything is to be learned from the state Individual Support Package (ISP) program, it's how to close the loopholes that allow embezzlement and abuse to continue unabated.

Given that the ISP program tries to help the profoundly disabled – and the profoundly disabled are the easiest of targets – they need a champion. Karen needs a champion. She needs someone who will say, 'This is not too hard. You are a human being and you deserve a fair go at life, just like every other Australian citizen.'

Anyone with a heart would step up – but it takes both heart and authority – and that's easier said than done.