Advocates: Report On Institutions Should Have Been Released Months Ago
By Dave Reynolds, Inclusion Daily Express
November 17, 2006

BRISBANE, AUSTRALIA--Disability rights advocates in the state of Queensland are calling for the government to release a report -- which was completed in July -- about the treatment people with intellectual disabilities have endured while housed at a notorious institution, along with the process under which they were sent there in the first place.

Former Supreme Court judge Bill Carter was commissioned to investigate the "legislative and service requirements for the provision of voluntary and involuntary care" for people with intellectual disabilities that present "challenging behavior". The investigation was prompted by news reports about the isolation and mistreatment of people housed at the Basil Stafford Centre.

According to Friday's Courier-Mail, Queensland Advocacy Incorporated solicitor Julian Porter said that the report should have been released to the public for comments immediately after it was finished.

"If Mr. Carter's report shows, as we expect it will, that there are significant numbers of vulnerable people with disabilities incarcerated in Queensland without a legal basis, then the people of Queensland need to know about it, no matter how unpalatable it might be politically," Mr. Porter said.

A Disability Services Ministry spokesman reportedly told the newspaper that Carter's report was "bound up in the Cabinet and budget process".

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Reproduced here under special arrangement with Inclusion Daily Express international disability rights news service.
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