10 minutes with… Minda chief executive David Panter
David Panter is the chief executive of Minda, the largest not-for-profit intellectual disability service provider and employer in SA. Business Insight asked him about Minda’s expansive services and the near collapse of Bedford.
Before Minda your career focused on the healthcare industry. What did you take from that and how does it apply to Minda?
I have had the privilege of working in the health and social care sector for over 45 years.
I started my career supporting people with Downs Syndrome in the city of Brighton on the south coast of England, and 45 years later I’m supporting people with intellectual disabilities in the suburb of Brighton on the other side of the world.
In between, I’ve worked in all aspects of the health, aged care and disability services in both the UK and Australia. In all these service areas it is critical to remember that we are here for the people who need the service, not for furthering the service itself.
Understanding the needs of people with intellectual disability and their families is more important than ever as the NDIS goes through significant reform and there is a danger that the specific needs of people with intellectual disability get overlooked, leaving them worse off.
What’ve been some highlights for Minda this year?
Three or four years ago, Minda, like many similar organisations nationally, was struggling to get to grips with the introduction of the NDIS.
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Moving from a single contract with Government to provide services to every person we support having their own funds with which to ‘buy’ the support they need had a big impact on how Minda performed.
On my arrival at the beginning of 2022, the task was to turn this situation around and get Minda back to being sustainable and having a future. After a lot of hard work from everybody at Minda, we’ve made progress on achieving this goal and therefore in the last year we’ve been able to start expanding our services, offering more choice of services to people we support and make some long needed investment in our infrastructure – for example an upgrade of our hydrotherapy pool and allied health facilities or an uplift in our technology which enables our staff to provide a better service.
The services Minda offers these days is quite expansive. Why’s it important to be a one-stop-shop?
Over recent years, Minda had diversified into a range of business areas as part of a strategy to deal with the financial uncertainty introduced by the arrival of the NDIS.
When I arrived at Minda, it was clear to me that many of these businesses were a distraction to our core business – which is supporting people with intellectual disability to have good independent lives. As a consequence, we have exited from some of these areas to refocus on our mission.
However, in looking at how best to support people with intellectual disability and their families it became clear that we needed to look holistically at their needs across their lives, from childhood, through adulthood and into older age and design our services accordingly. Our clients and their families have told us they value a relationship with us rather than support being seen as a transaction – they want the one-stop shop approach as this makes their lives much simpler given all the complexities they face.
The recent near collapse of Bedford was quite a shock to many. What lessons do you take away from that?
The Bedford story could very nearly have been the Minda story.
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A few years ago, Minda was regularly in the headlines regarding its finances and the quality of its services because of the way it was responding to the new world of NDIS. This led to challenges for the board and a significant turnover of senior management.
In early 2022, I was brought in as chief executive to turn the organisation around and enable us to build on our 127 year history of providing support to people with intellectual disability. Over the last three years, we have come a long way and have bucked the trend in the disability sector nationally in being able to operate as a large organisation within the NDIS.
This hasn’t been without its challenges but has only been possible by being open and transparent with staff and working closely with our clients and their families, responding to their needs. However, we still have some way to go and are now doing all that we can do to ensure that the current reform of the NDIS model being led by the Federal Government delivers what it needs to do for people with intellectual disability.
In July, Minda joined the new national initiative to improve how psychotropic medications are used to support people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Tell me about why Minda signed up to the program.
Minda is the largest provider of services to people with intellectual disability in South Australia and the seventh largest nationally. Given this, I believe we have a responsibility to advocate for people with intellectual disability and help develop new models of support and new services.
Part of this is to partner with researchers to undertake research such as this new national initiative on the use of psychotropic drugs.
This is just one of a number of research projects we are party to. In addition, we are also leading the way nationally in developing ways people with intellectual disability can access mainstream health services including preventative health programs.
This is vital as we know that life expectancy of people with intellectual disability is lower than those without intellectual disability and that this is largely due to discrimination and inability to access the health services available to the general population.
What’s in the pipeline for Minda?
Minda is now at a stage of growing its services across the state. We are heavily identified with the suburb of Brighton which has been our main base since 1911 and is currently where about 200 of our clients live independently in modern houses and apartments.
However, more of our clients receive support in suburbs throughout greater Adelaide and across the state into the South East and the Yorke Peninsula.
In a few weeks time we will be relaunching our image – still Minda, but with a new look – to emphasise that we are statewide.
In addition, we are shortly releasing a masterplan for our amazing Brighton site which emphasises its park-like quality next to the sea and enables us to develop it as a world class example of an inclusive community.
