Resilience, Participation, Health and Wellbeing to fund sitting fees and related costs for substantial consumer involvement in policy development and organisational development processes. Estimated cost: $75,000 establishment costs, and $170,000 per annum recurrent funding (with appropriate increments for cost increases over the forward estimates) Responsible Department(s): Department of Health & Human Services
A Community and Disability Services Commissioner Recommendation 26 Fund the establishment of a Community and Disability Services Commissioner to provide consumers of community and disability services with an avenue for redress for complaints about community sector service providers, and to ensure that the sector continues to deliver consistently high-quality services. Rationale Increasingly community service organisations deliver services that have very significant impacts on consumers. It is therefore critical that high service quality is maintained and that consumers of these services have access to a complaints mechanism when things go wrong.
However, there is no parallel system of grievance investigation/resolution that applies to the non-government community services sector. The powers and resources of the Ombudsman generally, and the Health Complaints Commissioner specifically, do not permit the oversight of this crucially important sector. Benefits of establishing a Community and Disability Services Commissioner in Tasmania would flow not only to consumers who would have an opportunity to have their complaints independently investigated and resolved, but also to community and disability service organisations which would benefit from being open to independent and constructive outside scrutiny from a properly constituted, independent consumer complaints body. The Tasmanian community would also benefit, with increased trust and confidence in the community services sector and its ability to deliver consistently high-quality services. Estimated cost: $500,000 per annum (with appropriate increments for cost increases over the forward estimates) Responsible Department(s): Departments of Justice and Health & Human Services
With services delivered by State Government agencies, consumers have recourse to the Tasmanian Ombudsman where they believe there has been a breakdown in service quality. Energy consumers have similar recourse to the Energy Ombudsman.
31 TasCOSS Budget Priorities Statement 2014-15