Member Communique – ABCB Withdrawal of SDA Advice
31 August 2023
 
On 24 August 2023, the ABCB removed from their website an article they had published in June 2023 in their ABCB News periodical related to the Classification of Specialist Disability Accommodation.

Members will likely be aware of the many comments posted in AIBS’s NEXUS platform about the article. 

AIBS contacted the ABCB CEO expressing a range of concerns about the article shortly after publication. AIBS was informed that the ABCB had been made aware of concerns of many practitioners nationally about the implications of the article.

AIBS was thanked by the ABCB for our useful contribution, advising that the ABCB were working with the National Disability Insurance Agency to resolve a range of policy implications that link to the published article.

The published article was updated sometime between 6 July and 2 August 2023 which did not address the issues that AIBS had raised. We again wrote to the ABCB CEO advising that the amended article leaves unresolved most of the concerns we had with elements of the article. AIBS is pleased that the article has been withdrawn and recommends that members who have downloaded copies of either version of the article disregard the article until further notice as it would appear that the ABCB no longer support the content of that article.

AIBS has asked if the ABCB would be providing an explanation regarding the removal of the article from their website, however a response had not been received at the time of issuing this communique.

We look forward to being able to update members in this regard in the near future.
 
Kind regards,

Jeremy Turner
Technical and Policy Manager