Touch of respite and a welcome home

Rocky Bay’s recent focus on the redevelopment of heritage-listed Lady Lawley Cottage is delivering results, with the facility set to provide vital disability services once completed.

The Cottesloe site will offer specialist programs, clinics, and therapy services for children and young adults living with disability or long-term illness, and their families.

Stage one of the renovation was completed last year, while stage two is planned for coming months.

“We’ve made it kid-safe and modernised it, which was largely funded by Stan Perron Foundation, very generously, and a few smaller scenarios,” Rocky Bay chief executive Michael Tait said.

On International Day of People with a Disability in December 2024, Rocky Bay received a $950,000 grant from Lotterywest to fund stage two of the redevelopment.

Mr Tait said this work involved refurbishing the cottage’s existing accommodation.

“Essentially, [stage two] is … kids respite, youth respite, family respite,” Mr Tait said.

“For example … in the school holidays, a few families from Broome came down. They had medical appointments or they wanted intensive therapy, and they could stay here because we’re still operating those homes until the new works start.

“They could get the [care they needed] for two weeks or four weeks and somewhere to stay that’s near the beach. Very nice, but most importantly, definitively accessible.

“They’re built for people with disability, particularly if they’ve got electric wheelchairs and larger equipment needs.”

This accessibility allows regional families to have a holiday in Perth, even if they don’t have medical appointments in the city.

“It’s almost like an extension of Ronald McDonald House … and they can feel like it’s a holiday,” Mr Tait told Business News.

“There’s a huge number of people asking for accessible housing; families from Albany, Bunbury, Karratha.

“There’s just not that much accessible housing for regional areas.”

Mr Tait said renovated accommodation at Lady Lawley Cottage also created opportunities for young adults with disability to move out of their family home for the first time.

“When my kids first moved out, they moved in together or with mates. That doesn’t happen in disability,” he said.

“The options aren’t there for people with disability. [I]t would be so cool … to have young people move in here, where it’s not permanent but we can help them live independently in a space where they can learn how to live together, how to shop, how to cook, how to entertain.

“These are nice homes near the beach with accessible parking and independent entrances [and] mum and dad can get used to the idea of [their child] living out of the family home.”

Mr Tait said Rocky Bay was aiming to have the redevelopment completed mid-year.

“We’re short about $400,000 or $500,000 to do that,” he said.

“We’re getting some further quotes at the moment, and then we’ll need to garner some additional dollars.

“I’d be anticipating a three- to four-months’ timeframe … so I’m hopeful that by mid-year we can offer some really cool services to aid independence to these people.”

Rocky Bay subsidiary, Shift Accessible Homes, plans to open five new specialist disability accommodation (SDA) houses this year, valued at a combined $15 million.

Two of those homes, one in Balcatta and one in Rockingham, were finished in January and are already housing residents.

“We’ve got another one opening in Duncraig in early March and then the last two are opening in April in Hamilton Hill and another in Rockingham,” Mr Tait said.

“The built-form, the home you have, makes a difference to your psyche. It has a massive impact on lives.”

He said Rocky Bay customers who moved into SDA housing were reconnecting with family, pursuing hobbies and working their first jobs; opportunities they would not have taken had they stayed in their original housing.

“From a mission-based perspective, the SDA has really hit the mark, for us at least,” Mr Tait said.

“I think it’s exceptional … by far the only profitable part of the NDIS and the only one predominantly driven by for-profits.

“We’re the only not for profit working in this space, and it’s the only part of our business that actually turns a margin, which is a bit of a shame.”

Despite the positive aspects of the SDA initiative, Mr Tait said there had been issues with the NDIS removing the service from customers’ plans.

“We’ve worked with a couple of people who we always thought were going to get SDA because they had SDA in their NDIS plans,” he said.

“We worked with their families on how they would move out of their homes, we worked on the design with them, moved them into the home.

“We thought, ‘Well, they’re definitely going to get SDA funding at some point’ and then we learned they’re not. It had been taken out of their plan.

“We don’t know the reason. The NDIS doesn’t give any feedback. We’ve appealed and heard nothing back.

“We’d be the only organisation that would let [customers] stay in the home, but we had to make a conscious decision to do that because we’re now not getting paid for it.”

In conversation with Business News about his experience with the NDIS, Mr Tait said he was concerned about the sector’s sustainability.

“Our own reports say that about seventy-five per cent of the sector is losing money and has been doing so for some time,” he said.

“If you look at the combined losses of organisations around the country that were here before the NDIS, we’re definitively underwriting the NDIS as we speak.

“Some of the pricing isn’t great … therapy hasn’t had a price increase now for six years, and when we talk about cost of living increases over the same time, our costs have gone up thirty per cent, so it’s no wonder we’re not making money.

“The definitive issue we have with the NDIS beyond getting pricing right is the inefficiency.

“We’ve got outstanding SDA monies from October 2023. We cannot ring anyone in the NDIS, we’re only to email.

“The backlog of emails is sitting, to my understanding, at two to three months at the moment, so you’re not going to get things solved.

“No other entity, no other sector, would put up with that.

“This year will be the year of mass failure, in my view.”