A Canberra man has spent more than two years in hospital while ACT Government agencies bicker over who would provide the services that would to allow him to leave, according to an advocacy group.
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A Legislative Assembly committee heard this morning that the man, who was not identified, had fallen between the cracks of two key territory bureaucracies leaving him in hospital so long he had become "institutionalised".
ACT Disability, Aged and Carer Advocacy Service chief executive Fiona May launched a stinging attack in front of the committee inquiring into public housing on ACT bureaucrats and their Disability ACT counterparts, alleging that the two agencies' inability to work together had left the man in limbo.
Ms May said that Housing ACT maintained that a house could not be allocated for the man until support services were in place and Disability ACT claimed that support services could not be put in place until a house was provided.
"One result of this lack of co-ordination is a client that had become so institutionalised that he now fears to leave hospital and now resists advocacy attempts to resolve the impasse," Ms May said.
"This man is in hospital and has been in hospital for a very long time, two years."
The Canberra Times reported today that welfare and advocacy groups say that Canberra's housing problems are creating a "human crisis" in the public housing sector that was "snowballing."
