WWDA welcomes the opportunity to make this Submission in response to the Royal Commission’s Safeguards & Quality Issues Paper (the Issues Paper). WWDA does so in the recognition that, despite various legislation, policies and systems for ‘safeguarding people with disability from violence and abuse’, current laws, policies and systems have to date, had little, to no impact on addressing the epidemic that is violence and abuse of women and girls with disability in Australia. Indeed, some of these laws, policies and systems – such as those related to the NDIS Quality and Safeguarding Commission – enable violence through their role in regulating (rather than eliminating and prohibiting) restrictive practices and segregated and closed accommodation and other settings.
