Page 1021 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 21 April 2021
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working with Defence I did everything that I could to support serving personnel staying connected to their family and their community and protecting their health and wellbeing. It is something I am still doing now and will continue to do.
I would now like to turn our attention to youth justice and the Bimberi Youth Justice Centre. As a high-risk setting, services continue to be delivered to ensure the health and wellbeing of children, young people and staff at Bimberi Youth Justice Centre. The health and wellbeing of young people at Bimberi remain a priority during the COVID-19 public health emergency. Bimberi Youth Justice Centre continues to respond to the independent reviews following the major incident in August 2019 through infrastructure upgrades, specialist consultancy, system improvements and training.
The ACT government is committed to removing barriers so that people with disability have equal access to justice here in the ACT. I am pleased to be able to share with you some of the notable achievements of this year from the ACT disability justice strategy. Providing education to front-line workers in the justice system to increase their capacity to recognise disability and to respond by implementing reasonable adjustments is a key component of the strategy. To support this goal, organisations across the justice system have participated in training to learn how to develop accessible resources using easy English. This training will continue to occur, with high levels of interest for the next one in July.
I am very excited about the continued development of the community of practice of disability liaison workers across the justice system. The community of practice has been meeting regularly since the beginning of the year, with disability liaison officers in place at Legal Aid ACT and at the Alexander Maconochie Centre, along with representatives from other justice agencies. By the end of the financial year there will be six disability liaison officers working together to support our agencies and organisations to do better in their work with people with disability and also support individuals with disability to navigate the system. I want to take this opportunity to congratulate ACT Corrective Services on the development and launch of their disability action and inclusion plan, which was developed in consultation with the disability reference group.
Still within the work of the Office for Disability, I am pleased to advise that the Integrated Service Response Program has supported 221 people since it commenced in November 2018. The program provides critical support to people with disability who have complex needs and require intensive short-term case coordination to ensure that their immediate support needs can be met. Participants are typically people with disability who may not be eligible for a funding package from the NDIS due to their residency status or people whose support needs are not met by the NDIS. The program continues to receive an average of nine referrals a month and is working further with human services directorates to develop bespoke responses to ensure that participants are supported and community safety is upheld.
There are approximately 80,000 people with disability in the ACT. This represents an estimated 19.4 per cent of the total ACT population. People with disability experience higher levels of discrimination and disadvantage than other members of the Canberra
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