Our Vision

RASAID stands for Ryde Area SUpported Accommodation for Intellectually Disabled. RASAID is 19 families who banded together more than five years ago with the goal of achieving supported accommodation for their disabled family members.

The parents of RASAID are mostly in their 50s, 60s and 70s, while our oldest member is 87. Our disabled sons and daughters range in age from mid-20s to early-50s and their disabilities are across the spectrum. We have supported each other in our caring role for decades and our adult children have grown up together, attending school, day programs, work placement and social groups together. We have between us more than 600 years of experience caring for a person with an intellectual disability. Our vision is to develop a model of supported accommodation that we believe will best suit the needs and wishes of our particular group of people.

We claim that we can best represent this group of people because we know them best. We have lived with our people for decades, observed them on a daily basis and been privy to their innermost hopes and dreams. They are telling us that, more than anything else, they want to be with their friends, and those friends are that group of people who have a disability similar to their own.

Our sons and daughters have been included in everything that our families have done for decades, but it is our experience that when given the choice, they prefer to be with people like themselves.  Inclusion in the wider community is not as important to them as inclusion in the group of like people. In this, they are no different from their non-disabled peers.

It is generally accepted that the three cornerstones of most people's lives are their families, their careers and their friends. When one considers that in most cases, people with an intellectual disability will not have a family of their own or a rewarding career, it is easy to see why the social life assumes priority in their lives. However, their disability often makes it difficult for them to access that social life if they are unable to use a telephone or a computer or to drive a car.

People with an intellectual disability are often as lonely and isolated living in dispersed group homes as they are living with ageing parents. Our model is an attempt to best meet the needs of our people after having witnessed over many years the pleasure and support our sons and daughters derive from each others' company. We believe that this residential model will allow them easy access to their friends while ensuring that each has privacy when desired.

The advantages of our model are:

• The person with a disability stays within his/her own immediate locality so the transition from the family home is much easier because the surrounds are familiar.

• The person with a disability stays within a group of disabled peers with whom he/she has grown up, again making the transition easier and allowing for the maintenance of a wide social network.

• The person with a disability remains close to work or day programs, thereby reducing the necessity for long and expensive travel across the city as now often happens. Each one of our sons and daughters attends a day placement in this area.

• The transition happens in a planned, timely and orderly way instead of the crisis-driven, trauma-causing way that occurs now. There can be nothing more inhumane than a person with a severe cognitive impairment losing at the same time the only home ever known and the primary carer.

• The transition is aided by parents who are still well and active enough to smooth over the inevitable bumps and to ease the way by having the family member home for weekends, holidays and special occasions.

• This will be a high empowerment model with parents on hand to advocate, liaise with staff and to ensure that person centred planning is followed.

• The support arrangements will be enhanced by assistance from parents all of whom will live close by.

• The residence will be staffed around the clock.

• The local community will be encouraged to contribute to the development by parents who are well-known in that community.

• The recurrent costs of such a model will be lower than those of a group home because staff ratios, particularly overnight, will be lower.

The members of RASAID are offering a practical and cost-effective alternative to the group home model. We firmly believe that our model will work well because we are already a community of like-minded people and our sons and daughters are already a socially cohesive group. We envisage a small-scale cluster of five four-bedroom self-contained houses, one of which will have a large common area. Two houses will be modified to cater for high support physical needs.

We are currently exploring ways in which we may make our dream a reality. We wish this pioneering model to be used as a pilot project which, when shown to be successful, may point the way forward in disability accommodation service provision and be emulated across the country.

It is time to pursue a variety of more cost-effective means of support for people with an intellectual disability while not compromising in any way their quality of life. Clustered residential settings are one way of achieving this and it is our belief, based on extensive networking with fellow carers, that this model is widely supported by families. Unfortunately, those families seldom have a voice in disability forums and policy decisions, so their wishes go unheard.

Finally, we quote the words of Gwynnyth Llewellyn, one of Australia's foremost researchers in disability:

'Many older parent-carers, after years of thought, have developed innovative strategies that deserve the undivided attention of politicians, government bureaucrats and service providers alike. We ignore these at our peril faced with a steadily increasing and growing number of older, older parent-carers and older-older adults with intellectual disability.'

(p47 Invisible Carers: Facing an Uncertain Future)