Supported Decision-Making for People with Cognitive Impairments: An Australian Perspective?

Honouring the requirement of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities to introduce supported decision-making poses many challenges. Not least of those challenges is in writing laws and devising policies which facilitate access to formal and informal supports for large numbers of citizens requiring assistance with day-to-day issues such as dealing with welfare agencies, managing income security payments, or making health care decisions. Old measures such as representative payee schemes or “nominee” arrangements are not compatible with the CRPD. However, as comparatively routine social security or other government services become increasingly complex to navigate, and as self-managed or personalised budgets better recognise self-agency, any “off the shelf” measures become more difficult to craft and difficult to resource. This paper focuses on recent endeavours of the Australian Law Reform Commission and other local and overseas law reform and policy initiatives to tackle challenges posed both for ordinary citizens and those covered by special programs (such as Australia’s National Disability Insurance Scheme and “disability trusts” in Australia and Canada).