Queensland Advocacy Incorporated (QAI) is an independent, community-based advocacy organisation and community legal service that provides individual and systems advocacy for people with disability and advocates for the protection and advancement of the fundamental needs, rights and lives of people with disability in Queensland.

In this submission to the Department of Seniors, Disability Services and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Partnerships on reforming Queensland’s authorisation framework for the use of restrictive practices, QAI considers the use of restrictive practices to infringe the fundamental human rights of people with disability. 

Restrictive practices are used as a form of behaviour control, applied to individuals considered to be exhibiting ‘behaviours of concern’. There are numerous issues with this, not least the assumption that the problem lies with the individual rather than the systems that control them, and that the solution lies with a restriction of personal freedoms as opposed to structural change.

Recommendations:

1. Reforming Queensland’s authorisation framework needs to be part of a larger piece of work designed to reduce and eliminate the use of restrictive practices on people with disability.

2. Expand the scope of Queensland’s restrictive practices authorisation framework to include all NDIS participants, including children with disability and persons with disabilities other than intellectual or cognitive disability.

3. Restrictive practices used on all people with disability in every setting in which they occur, including schools, aged care facilities and detention settings, must be regulated and monitored.

4. Align Queensland’s restrictive practice definitions with those in the NDIS Rules. Ensure that locking gates, doors, and windows to prevent physical harm being caused to an adult with a skills deficit is considered a restrictive practice for the purposes of the legislation.

5. Consider additional procedural safeguards for containment as a type of ‘environmental restraint’, owing to the gravity of this type of restrictive practice. For example, approval from a higher-level authorisation officer could be required, together with increased oversight of its use.

6. Strengthen the definition of environmental restraint in both the NDIS rules and in Queensland’s authorisation framework, with greater detail and more nuance to clearly demonstrate the differing levels of restrictive practices encompassed by this overarching definition.

7. Expressly prohibit certain forms of restrictive practices in Queensland’s legislation, including the use of seclusion and containment for children under 18, the use of physical restraints such as prone and supine restraint and the use of psychosocial restraints that exert emotional and psychological control over people with disability.

8. Introduce an administrative model of authorisation, whereby a Senior Practitioner undertakes functions such as providing authorisation for restrictive practices, providing advice, developing guidelines and building the capacity of the sector.

9. QAI does not support the proposal for Authorised Program Officers or panels located within service providers and/or appointed by service providers to authorise the use of any restrictive practices.

10. QAI does not support removing the ability of the Department of Disability Services to develop positive behaviour support plans for the use of containment and/or seclusion. The Queensland government must remain a provider of last resort indefinitely, owing to its non-derogable responsibility to protect its most vulnerable citizens from harm.

11. All decisions should be reviewable by QCAT, with all persons with disability provided access to an independent disability advocate or legal representative depending upon the practice used.

12. The team working alongside the Senior Practitioner should include people with lived experience of disability and restrictive practices.

13. Facilitate greater active participation of people with disability in the authorisation process. This will require the injection of additional resources to ensure measures are not tokenistic.

14. Ensure access to independent disability advocacy to help ensure the will, preferences, and rights of people with disability remain central to decision-making regarding the use of restrictive practices