Imagine a stranger, appointed by the State, takes over the decision-making rights of your disabled child.
That is, you as a parent have been completely removed from your child’s life, at a time when you, as a parent, need to make life-changing decisions about your child, your flesh and blood.
What would you do? How would you react? Whom would you see? Where would you go for help?
In Australia, every week AASGAA deals with and responds to similar calls. Families grappling with the monster known as the guardianship system(often NDIS and Trustees not far behind) and new parents, victims of this snatch and grab, unaware they are just another notch on the bedpost of the State’s growing human trafficking ring.
No one is safe, age is irrelevant. Even having legal capacity seems to be irrelevant, once targeted.
How can you explain such evil to new victims when even individuals caught up in the horror of the guardianship system, find it all so incredulous?
We hear the disbelief in victims' voices often: ‘this is a mistake’ or ‘once I speak to XX, the decision will be overturned’.
It is not a mistake and everyone involved in this horror called guardianship knows full well that escape is virtually impossible. The system is not designed to allow unsuspecting new victims the ease of escape. There is logic in the State’s madness: capture the assets and income if there are any, and control State costs. Control a vulnerable person taping into free State resources such as hospital, justice, and housing costs to name a few. If possible, also redirect some of the federal funding(NDIS and federal pensions) to the bankrupt State.
Think the State cares? It's not uncommon to find the homeless living under bridges or dilapidated buildings under the Public Trustee or Public Guardian. No one cares about them. It was not created to care nor to protect. That is just the propaganda campaign sold to the naïve public who still believe that a magic wand exists to protect our most vulnerable.
Facts don’t lie. Neither do actions. Words just muddy the already dark waters.
So-called ‘tribunal hearings,’ or “Kafka trials” have not developed by accident. They have been created by the legislative powers that be, to bypass court rules and facts/evidence and to hinder access to justice at every turn. This is not a figment of AASGAA's imagination, speak to anyone who has attended a hearing and see what really happens in these secretive trials that seem to lack the true transparency of court procedures and outcomes. Trials that seem only fitting in an Eastern European bloc country.
Given all roads lead to the State and knowing that the State has full control of the legislative process and Acts created and every word and definition, in these Acts, you start to see guardianship entrapment is no accident!
Appealing horrid decisions can see you running around in circles for years, letters of 'nothing to see here' (ie go away) the only response. Time against you, your health, and that of your child, diminishing by the day. Again, all by design.
Many have suicided in the process; others simply give up, and most accept their miserable fate.
All part of the long game.
Legislative changes focusing on the rights to protect(yes guardianship and administration are needed in many cases to protect our vulnerable) and enforcing trusted supports and families as a first choice and the State as the last, very last, default option is needed yesterday. The State should never intervene when conflicts within families exist nor should look for one to step in. Many times, neighbors have attended hearings as 'interested parties'. A neighbour. We have also seen long-lost friends having equal footing with loved ones. Hospitals and NDIS support workers, especially social workers, seem to often initiate applications.
Who benefits from this takeover of decision-making rights?
The government's role of protecting our human rights seriously conflicts with its business model; making money, and saving money, off the vulnerable.
Remove the money and financial cost savings to the State (Public Trustees, NDIS funding in the hands of white-collar professionals and State departments ) and direct matters initially to lower courts, preferably in the Federal arena, and ensure informal and family supports have legal rights to care, then we are progressing forward.
Let’s be honest, why is the State involved at all in taking over the decision-making rights of your disabled adult child when a parent, a loving parent, can make those decisions?
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