Agency faces demand for $1m

A support agency that did not prevent one of its clients from raping another client faces a $1 million demand for "redress" because the Health Ministry says it did not provide the services it was contracted to provide.

Porirua-based Disability Equity And Lifestyle Support (Deals), which helps 81 people with intellectual disabilities to live in their own homes, was investigated by the ministry after one of its clients raped another client in December 2004.

Letters released to Radio New Zealand under the Official Information Act show that the ministry found that:

* Both the rapist and his victim did not receive the number of support hours that Deals was contracted to provide to them.

* The rapist "had become addicted to pornographic material to the point that he carried it with him in public, yet there appeared to be no action taken to support him with his addiction".

* Deals did not hold any reports on the rape.

The ministry says further investigation by the HealthPAC auditing agency disclosed that Deals invoiced the ministry for 51,274 more hours of home care than it provided, worth a total of $1 million, in the two years to late last year.

The business support manager in the ministry's Disability Services Directorate, David Chrisp, said the ministry required "redress for the under-delivery of services".

But he stopped short of demanding complete repayment because the ministry was "aware of the need to balance any repayment with the continued viability of the provider and the impact on users of the service".

Family counsellor Dennis Smith, who chairs the Deals trust board, said the $1 million had been spent on services and there was no money left to repay.

The trust's executive director, Carole Kell, said the jobs of its 66 fulltime-equivalent workers were not at risk yet because the agency was still being funded by the ministry.

"But we are going to start experiencing some quite severe cashflow problems within the near future."

Mr Smith said the trust had refused to sign a renewal of its contract for the past two years because the $18 an hour rate offered by the ministry did not allow for training, administrative costs or non-face-to-face contact with the families.

"The ministry is saying we should be providing a service in this particular way. We are saying it can't be done," he said. "Four years ago we wrote to them saying this funding model is flawed. We have pursued that ever since - gently, because this is our funding body."

Mr Chrisp confirmed that the seven southern North Island agencies being paid $18 an hour were on the lowest rates in the country.

The ministry told the seven $18-an-hour agencies last week that their rate would go up to $24 an hour from July 1, without backdating.

Mrs Kell said the trust had disciplined staff who did not provide written reports on the rape case, but did not accept that it had not provided the required level of service.

"The support worker had not been to support that person for all of those numbers of hours, but other people had been in contact with him.

"The manager of the service at that time had done some work with him. Some other people had done some work with him. So it was not fully recorded in the usual way."

The man was convicted of the rape and is now in a secure facility at Porirua Hospital.

Mr Chrisp said the ministry did not want to blame Deals for the rape because it was impossible to tell whether the alleged shortfall in its hours made any difference to the outcome.

The ministry completed a further draft report on the trust this week. Mr Chrisp said he had not seen the draft, but Mrs Kell said it showed that Deals had acted on all four requirements and four recommendations from the ministry's initial audit soon after the rape.

The National Party's disability issues spokesman, Dr Paul Hutchison, said the case backed up widespread concerns about disability services which first surfaced when Auckland agency Focus 2000 was found this year to have overclaimed $2.5 million.

A parliamentary committee has launched an investigation into the sector.