“Young persons with disabilities who live long-term in aged care facilities experience extreme social isolation, along with declining emotional, physical and mental health,” she explained.

“While aged care facilities provide basic shelter and care to young persons with disabilities, they cannot provide social interaction with other young persons or the specialised disability support that a young person with disabilities may need.”

The Independent Living: ALHR Position Statement reflected on the 2013 comments made by the UN’s committee on the rights of persons with disabilities to Australia which provided specific guidance on Australia’s fulfilment of its obligations.

The committee had encouraged “the state party to develop and implement a national framework for the closure of residential institutions and allocate the resources necessary for support services that would enable persons with disabilities to live in their communities.”

It then recommended that immediate action be taken “to make sure that persons with disabilities are given a free choice of where they want to live and with whom and be able to receive the necessary support regardless of the place of residence,” and advised Australia to “conduct a mapping of the various forms of living accommodation based on the needs of various kinds of persons with disabilities.”

The ALHR’s position is that “young people with disabilities are placed in aged care facilities predominantly because there is a lack of adequate and appropriate accommodation services, a lack of adequate funding, and because their families and carers can no longer care for them at home.”

The paper set out that “more funding is required by Commonwealth and state governments to provide adequate and appropriate accommodation options to young people with disabilities to reduce the burden on ageing parents, and to provide better opportunities for young people to be in environments which allow them to grow and thrive as they enter adulthood.”

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It argues there are “currently no adequate accommodation pathways for young people with disabilities,” further noting that “aged care facilities are not the solution to this growing need.”

Once young disabled persons enter aged care facilities, the ALHR said that state and territory governments have little incentive to provide pathways out of aged care and for the funding of complex and ongoing support needs of young individuals with disabilities.

“ALHR calls for immediate action to relocate young persons with disabilities out of aged care facilities and into specialist disability accommodation where they can live in the community and be provided with disability supports and societal interaction,” Ms Peukert said.

The position paper recommended the NDIA be “sufficiently funded so that it may provide adequate funding to persons with disabilities to allow them to live independently, receive the support they need, and to live with dignity,” as well as calling on the federal, state and territory governments to provide additional funding for the building of specialist disability accommodation.

Recommendations also included ceasing the “forcing of persons with disabilities into shared living arrangements in order to save money with the result of placing vulnerable individuals at risk of violence,” and the offering of “the option of specialist disability accommodation to all persons with disabilities with extreme functional impairment or very high support needs.”