New South Wales Consolidated Acts

COMMUNITY SERVICES (COMPLAINTS, REVIEWS AND MONITORING) ACT 1993 - SECT 8

8 Functions of Official Community Visitors

(1) An Official Community Visitor may:

(a) at any reasonable time, enter and inspect a place at which a visitable service is provided, and

(b) confer alone with any person who is resident or employed at such a place, and

(c) inspect any document held at such place which relates to the operation of a visitable service, and

(d) provide the relevant Minister in relation to the provider of the visitable service and the Ombudsman with advice or reports on any matters relating to the conduct of such a place, and

(e) exercise such other functions as may be prescribed by the regulations for the purposes of this section.

(2) Before inspecting a document as referred to in subsection (1), the Official Community Visitor must take all reasonable steps to ascertain, and must have regard to (but is not bound by), the wishes of any person to whom the document relates and for whom a service is provided at that place.

(3) An Official Community Visitor must, in exercising a function under this section, act in such a manner as preserves, as far as possible, the privacy of each person resident at that visitable service.

(4) The Ombudsman may investigate a matter concerning the provision of services by the provider of a visitable service, being a matter arising out of any advice or report given under this section.

(5) For the purposes of this Act and the application of the Ombudsman Act 1974 , a matter investigated under this section by the Ombudsman is taken to be a matter subject to a complaint made about a service provider under Part 4 of this Act.

(6) In this section:
"visitable service" means:

(a) an accommodation service provided by the Department of Community Services or the Department of Ageing, Disability and Home Care, or by a funded agency where a person using the service is in the full-time care of the service provider, or

(b) a residential centre for handicapped persons, or

(c) a service prescribed by the regulations as a visitable service.