Ms Maria N? Fhlatharta:

I will further add to what Ms Hassett has comprehensively dealt with regarding some of the economic issues. The root of a few of the Senator's questions comes down to the same issue, which is the agency and autonomy people have in deciding what their support looks like and what support they need to live what they consider to be a good life. This touches on choice in support and home care, routes out of institutionalisation, institutionalisation in the home, and the issues around respite.

A lot of the time, home care services are not delivered in a manner that is emancipatory or centres the person. People do not have control over who is entering their lives and what kind of supports they get. It should not be called support but they are grateful to have anything. This is not how we should model support for disabled people at any age. As Ms Hassett reiterated, this also applies to older people, particularly older disabled women who seem to be especially disadvantaged.

There are different forms of institutionalisation. In the home, if people do not have a choice about the care - "care" can be a fraught word in our community - or support they are receiving, it is not support. If they do not have control or agency over their lives, they can end up experiencing institutionalisation in their own home or even in a supported living arrangement that is supposed to be or nominally is community based. We need to interrogate that and ensure that people have choice and control over the care and support they receive.

Looking at routes out of institutionalisation, we are supposed to be decongregating and moving people out of institutionalised settings. A lot of the time this stuff is fraught and people can struggle when faced with de-institutionalisation or leaving an institution. That is because people's personal experience of institutionalisation is an absolute nightmare and they suffer significant trauma, which they need support in overcoming. At a point when we are closing down institutions in this country, however, we completely fail to support people in exercising control or choice. We move them out of communities that they might be familiar with and instead of something that should be an incredibly empowering experience, we approach it with such little regard to someone's autonomy that it is not seen or experienced as such.

Ms Hassett covered the range of institutions quite well. We want people to be able to have breaks from the people they live with in the same way that we all need breaks from the people we live with. We want people to experience different things but we cannot do that in a way that effectively means that first, disabled people are painted as burdens, which is such a danger and second, that people are placed in institutions because of that.