Letter labels intellectually disabled who distrust IHC as ‘serial complainants’

IHC/IDEA Services published a scathing open letter on its website by a former board member defending the organisation after a damning review of its complaints policy. The review was also critical of Whaikaha, the Ministry of Disabled People. Photo / NZME

A former IHC board member has called a damning review into how the country’s largest disability services provider handles complaints a “hatchet” job and referred to the intellectually disabled residents or whānau who took part as “serial complainants”.

In the open letter by IHC life member Shelley Payne, published on the IHC website and Facebook page in November, Payne said she felt compelled to respond to the review commissioned by Whaikaha, Ministry of Disabled People, the findings of which were published in the Weekend Herald in October.

The eight-month-long review found the 50 intellectually disabled participants or their families distrusted IDEA Services and feared retaliation or removal from an IDEA residential home if they complained.

The anonymous participants also shared experiences of chemical restraints, threats to send one resident to a psychiatric unit, terse and threatening interactions and communications from IHC leadership, delays and failures to respond to inquiries and a perceived culture of control and institutionalisation.

The $48,000 review conducted by barrister Rachael Schmidt-McCleave was also critical of Whaikaha and recommended the Ministry and IHC work together to rebuild the community’s trust.

“Any retaliatory or condemnatory behaviour whatsoever at any level must not be tolerated from here on in and that message ought to be conveyed from the board itself,” Schmidt-McCleave wrote.

Shelley Payne was awarded a New Zealand Order of Merit for services to people with intellectual disabilities in the 2021 New Year's Honours. Payne was previously IHC vice-president and a board member. Photo / NZME

In her open letter Payne, who was an IHC board member for 15 years to 2018 and whose own intellectually disabled son died, wrote that she had been “privy to countless hours of discussion, consultations and review processes to address the concerns of repeat complainants.

“I have also witnessed the same intransigent complainants being hellbent on bringing IHC and (subsidiary) IDEA Services, the chief executive and the board to their knees by pursuing irrational, vindictive vendettas that have served nobody well.”

Payne, who together with her husband owns the Trinity Wharf Hotel in Tauranga and other multi-million dollar properties around the upper North Island, said the “ability for serial complainants to choose an alternative provider is the intelligent option, rather than adopting a destructive scorched-earth approach towards IHC and IDEA Services”.

“The public vilification of a highly competent, long-serving chief executive and board chair has conveniently, and cynically, become the disingenuous approach by a government ministry that is actually failing all of us.

“By gaslighting families and people with intellectual disability, in leading them to believe that service providers are generously funded and able to offer everything desirable to ‘enable a good life’, is unconscionable.”

Disability advocate Glenn Marshall, who was one of three who called for IHC/IDEA Services chief executive Ralph Jones and board chairman Tony Shaw to resign over the review findings, said Payne’s letter was “tone deaf”.

Glenn Marshall has complained to Whaikaha about an open letter on the IHC website by a former board member which is scathing of the Ministry and a damning review of IDEA Services' complaints process. Photo / Warren Buckland

Marshall said the letter repeated the retaliatory conduct that IDEA Services had been criticised for in the review including that those unhappy should choose another provider.

“In a lot of towns in New Zealand IDEA Services is the only provider. Should people be forced to move to another city?”

He also said it was offensive to the intellectually disabled community that Payne, a New Zealand Order of Merit recipient for services to people with intellectual disabilities, suggested complainants take the “intelligent option” to switch providers.

Marshall took issue with the review participants being labelled “serial complainants” and pointed out the identities of those interviewed by Schmidt-McCleave were anonymomised.

IHC’s communications staff sent the letter to the Herald newsdesk as an opinion piece for publication in early and mid-November. On November 14, after it was not published by the Herald, IHC published the letter on its website and Facebook page.

Whaikaha deputy chief executive Amanda Bleckmann said the Ministry was disappointed over the letter and that it created uncertainty around IHC’s commitment to the review recommendations.

“We were very disappointed by IHC’s decision to publish the letter on their website; to comment on it in a Facebook post and, we have now learned, to also seek publication of it more widely in the NZ Herald.

“This has created uncertainty in the community about IHC’s commitment to rebuilding trust in the community that we both serve, and its commitment to the outcome of the review.

Amanda Bleckmann, Deputy Chief Executive for Commissioning, Design and Delivery at Whaikaha – Ministry of Disabled People.

Bleckmann said the review by Schmidt-McCleave was “very important in terms of setting out a pathway for resolving some long-standing issues and concerns.

“The review set out things that both Whaikaha and IDEA Services need to do in order to rebuild the trust of the community we both serve.

“We owe it to the families and carers whose experiences are the basis of the review to be diligent in our response to the review’s recommendations.”

The Ministry wrote to IHC last Monday asking that the letter, which was by then removed from Facebook, be removed.

“We wrote to IDEA services to ask them to remove the content and not continue to publish it in any other form. We had earlier given them feedback on our views on the letter, that publishing it has created uncertainty on their commitment to the review.”

At the time of publishing this article, the letter remained on the IHC website but after the Herald raised questions about the letter IHC published a press release on its site addressing the review’s findings publicly for the first time.

The Herald put questions to Payne through an email address supplied by IHC and via voicemail, which she did not respond to.

Jones said Payne continued to work tirelessly for people with intellectual disabilities throughout New Zealand and was “entitled to her opinion”.

He said IDEA Services supported more than 2000 people with intellectual disabilities and their families.

“We have received many comments in support of Mrs Payne’s letter.”

Jones encouraged and welcomed the three complainants who called for his resignation to “come forward and raise their specific concerns with us directly”.

He said IHC/IDEA had made it clear to Whaikaha “that we accept the recommendations of the report and will continue to work with them on addressing those recommendations”.

Meanwhile, the office of the Health and Disability Commissioner confirmed it was in the process of undertaking an analysis of the complaints received about IDEA Services and an analysis of complaints about other residential disability service providers.

“We are not in a position to comment on next steps until that analysis is complete.”

The HDC searched its database and found that during the past five years HDC had received 33 complaints about IDEA Services, including vocational and day services, and 159 complaints about all residential disability service providers.

Natalie Akoorie is the Open Justice deputy editor, based in Waikato and covering crime and justice nationally. Natalie first joined the Herald in 2011 and has been a journalist in New Zealand and overseas for 28 years, recently covering health, social issues, local government, and the regions.