Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In Bendigo, like many areas, we are trying to get on top of a problem which is a ticking time bomb. We, like many areas, have a number of ageing parents who are still caring for profoundly disabled adult children. They are people quite often in their 70s and 80s still caring for their children who are in their 40s and 50s. Knowing that this is a problem and hearing the calls of local parents, a group of us have got together to form a working group to map the unmet demand in our community and to work together to find solutions. I would like to acknowledge the success of our first meeting in bringing together not just the parents but also the not-for-profits in this space. We also had in the room real estate agents keen to work with us to provide private alternatives to this issue. We had our local housing group—Haven; Home, Safe—in the room. They hosted the meeting together with Amicus, Radius and a number of other not-for-profit groups that support people with a disability. We are working together as a community to help meet the unmet demand when it comes to disability housing. In the future we will be having more meetings in the hope that we are finding real solutions, practical solutions, for people in this situation.