Role and function of community visitors

A community visitor is someone appointed to visit the adult's residence and help them understand their rights. Our network of community visitors regularly visit these sites to:

• promote the rights of the residents or patients
• protect their interests
• ensure no one is taking advantage of them.

The program seeks to strike a balance between the adult's right to be able to make their own decisions and their right to adequate support and protection from abuse, neglect and exploitation.

Community visitors are required by law to regularly visit adults with impaired capacity or a mental or intellectual impairment, and who live in approved care facilities. This is to ensure the residents’ rights and interests are protected.

Wherever possible, visitors try to enable residents to have the opportunity to take part in the decision-making processes that impact on their lives.

Visitors must remain independent and objective to perform their role effectively and with credibility, and operate within the law. As such they are not:

• personal advocates
• case managers
• direct service providers
• investigators
• volunteers
• personal friends of the resident
• decision makers for residents
• available to act on advisory boards, committees or as consultants to organisations or sites on or connected to the care facility.

Visitor functions

Community visitors have two main functions: inquiry and complaint. They inquire into issues raised by residents or their representatives, and try to resolve complaints by or for a resident.

Visitors always try to focus on issues affecting individual residents, rather than on broader systemic issues, but sometimes such issues may arise. Our community visitors can legally check whether the facility has:

• adequate services for assessment, treatment and support of residents
• appropriate standards of services for accommodation, health and well-being of residents
• services delivered in a way that provides least restriction to resident or patient rights
• adequate information for residents or patients about their rights
• accessible and effective complaints procedures

They can also investigate any other matter about the facility or residents at the request of our Director-General, for example allegations of abuse, neglect or exploitation.

Community visitors try to look into these matters and resolve any complaints. Unresolved complaints are referred on for investigation or resolution to a higher level of the organisation which runs the site or other agencies.

The visitor completes a referral form containing details of the complaint and their concerns and recommendations.

Visitor powers

Legally, community visitors have the power to:

• enter an approved facility without notice between 8am and 6pm on any day and access all areas. Access to a resident’s rooms is subject to their approval
• enter a facility out-of-hours with authorisation from the chief executive or a delegate
• require a service provider to answer questions and, upon request, produce site documents relating to the issue (see visitable site documents below)
• inspect and make copies of any relevant visitable site documents
• confer alone with a resident or staff member
• require the service provider to provide help where practical.

There are criminal penalties if staff do not comply with requests for information or give reasonable assistance. Our visitors exercise these powers to ensure residents’ rights and interests are not compromised while they are being cared for.

Visitable site documents

A visitable site document is any document relating to the facility including its records, policies and procedures or documents relating to a resident, including personal or medical files, regardless of who owns the file. These can include:

• incident reports
• residents’ medical records and medication charts
• residents’ financial records
• residents’ individual behaviour management program and treatment plans
• policy and procedures manual
• complaints policy.

Our program team

A program team supports our community visitors to carry out their roles. The team:

• administers the program
• receives, processes and forwards reports to care facilities we visit
• informs the mental health, disability and hostel sectors about the program
• helps refer complaints to appropriate agencies for resolution or further investigation.

The program coordinator reports each month to our department’s director-general, who is the program’s chief executive. The director-general can appoint community visitors and perform the following important functions that are delegated to our program coordinator:

• deciding frequency of care facility visits
• responding to a resident’s request to visit
• sending reports from community visitors to the managers in charge of care facilities for follow up action, or to bodies such as the Adult Guardian, Public Advocate or Director of Mental Health.