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Disability Support Services

Quality and safeguarding

This page is about the work we are doing to improve the quality and safety of the disability supports and services we fund.

If you or someone you know is currently feeling unsafe or experiencing violence, abuse or neglect, help is available.

For more information about the role others play in keeping everyone safe, see our page on how we all can contribute to safety. You can also check out our expected behaviour for staff and providers. 

On this page

What is quality?

Disability Support Services (DSS) funds providers to deliver a wide range of disability support services, to more than 50,000 disabled people each year. 

DSS checks the quality of the services it funds to make sure:

  • people are accessing quality disability supports
  • services and supports are keeping disabled people and tāngata whaikaha Māori safe from abuse and neglect

We expect all our providers to deliver quality and safe disability supports and services. These should: 

  • support disabled people, tāngata whaikaha Māori, family and whānau to achieve their good life outcomes
  • safeguard disabled people and tāngata whaikaha Māori from abuse and neglect
  • be experienced positively by disabled people, tāngata whaikaha Māori, family and whānau
  • have robust organisational policies and practices
  • be good value for money
  • be aligned with Te Tiriti o Waitangi, Enabling Good Lives and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD).

Our expectations for providers are described in relevant contracts, legislation, regulations and policies.

What is safeguarding?

Safeguarding protects a person’s right to make their own decisions about their life, including decisions about their safety and wellbeing.

It means taking action to prevent, identify and respond to situations where a person is at risk of or experiencing abuse, neglect, violence or harm.

Disabled people and tāngata whaikaha Māori are much more likely to experience violence and abuse or neglect than other New Zealanders. 

Safeguarding approaches are particularly important for disabled people and tāngata whaikaha Māori who are:

  • at risk of or experiencing harm, violence, abuse and neglect not able to remove themselves from a risk of serious harm and keep themselves safe
  • not having their human rights upheld.

Our approach to quality and safeguarding

We know that there we need to continue strengthen our systems and policies to better safeguard people and check the quality of supports.

We are working towards quality and safeguarding actions that:

  • Prevent – Prevent issues happening
  • Identify – Identify issues when they do happen
  • Respond – Respond to issues that are found
  • Develop – Develop and improve disability supports. 

We are reviewing the quality and safeguarding framework to make improvements for the future. 

How DSS checks quality and safeguarding

DSS has several ways that we check the services we fund are delivering quality disability supports. These checks also help safeguard disabled people and tāngata whaikaha Māori from abuse and neglect. These checks form our quality and safeguarding framework.

More information is available here: ‘How Whaikaha checks the quality of disability supports and safeguarding of disabled people’ (quality and safeguarding framework) external. 

People for Us 

People for Us will be delivered by community organisations and staffed by disabled people, tāngata whaikaha Māori, and Pacific disabled people. They will work alongside disabled adults who live in residential services to find out if they are safe, living their good life and experiencing high quality support and services. They will assist those with safety or wellbeing concerns to follow the relevant pathway to resolve them. external

Assisting Change

The Assisting Change service supports disability providers to improve the quality of their supports. It is being delivered by Te Pou Wairoa and will match the disability provider with advisors to assist them to address and resolve specific quality issues. Kaupapa Māori and Pacific advisors will be available for Māori and Pacific providers.

Disability Abuse Prevention and Response prototype (DAPAR)

A team of disabled-led and community-led specialists in family violence and safeguarding disabled adults from abuse. DAPAR:

Responds to situations where disabled adults are experiencing abuse or who are unable to protect or remove themselves from abusive situations. They work directly with the disabled person and build a cross agency response with that person. DAPAR are currently only receiving referrals from DSS and NASC/EGL sites.

Contract developmental evaluations and investigations

Each year DSS commissions evaluations for some funded providers against their contracts. We can also commission investigations in response to serious complaints, incidents, deaths or concerns.  

Complaints

Our complaints team manages complaints about the quality of the disability supports and services we fund.

For a detailed description of what DSS does when managing a complaint about the quality of disability supports, check out the complaints  (DOCX 217 KB)operational guidance.

The DSS complaints operational guidance has been updated to reflect the recommendations made as part of the Schmidt-McCleave Review and incorporates feedback from disability providers and the disability community. You can read the Schmidt-McCleave Report on the Whaikaha website external. 

Feedback

Manages feedback about the quality of DSS funded disability supports and services.

Critical Incident Reporting

Receives and manages critical incident reports for all DSS contracted services.

Death notifications

Receives and manages notifications of deaths of disabled people in DSS funded residential care.

Develop and publish quality data and insights (in development)

DSS is developing data analysis and insights to inform learning and improvement to the system.

Alternate formats

Alternate formats of this information was developed when Disability Support Services was still a part of Whaikaha, and have not been updated yet. Contact information contained within them may be inaccurate - all enquiries should go to quality@msd.govt.nz instead. 

Updated on
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