I live in South Australia and I spent 18 years trying to have my son (autistic with intellectual disability, and non-verbal, now 35 years old) relocated from a supported group home in Sydney, New South Wales, to an equivalent home in Adelaide, South Australia.
Funding for disability services in Australia is a ‘Federal Budget’ issue. Funds are allocated to an individual via the state service. When we moved from New South Wales to South Australia in 1990 we were not able to access government financial assistance to have our son moved, because disability funds are not transferrable between states. It took us 18 years to lobby the disability services in this state to create ‘new funding’ for a supported accommodation placement. He lives in Adelaide now, and we can have him come and stay with us of a weekend. (It used to take us two days of driving to reach Sydney, where we had to find accommodation, simply to visit him when he lived there. It was a very stressful time, which I am glad is now over.
