Concerns company invested in ‘property, not people’

Support staff are concerned a national disability support provider is cutting services as its subsidiary property company booms, it has been claimed.

IDEA Services announced it planned to withdraw from about 5 per cent of its business last week, which could affect about 1200 people with learning disabilities.

Support staff and union E tu have raised concerns Accessible Properties, a subsidiary company of IHC New Zealand, was experiencing growth while IDEA Services faced cuts to several services.

However, IHC communications general manager Gina Rogers said the two companies were quite separate and no funding had moved between them.

Accessible Properties is the largest non-government social housing provider in New Zealand, which provides low cost homes to people with disabilities, older people, people on low income, and the organisations supporting them.

More than 1100 properties will be transferred from Housing New Zealand to Accessible Properties, which already manages more than 1600 properties, next month.

E tu organiser Coral Hodgson said support staff were concerned IDEA Services was ‘‘investing in property, not people’’. She has been meeting with staff for stopwork meetings during the past two weeks, as workers voted on whether to strike following unsuccessful pay and condition negotiations, and support staff had approached her with concerns IDEA Services was getting out of the care industry and into property.

However Rogers said no funds from IDEA Services had gone into Accessible Properties’ investments. ‘‘It gets its own significant investments from the Government and that’s for running social housing. Just like IDEA Services gets its funding ... for running disability support services. Naturally we can’t take money for disability services and invest it in social housing and nor can we go the other way.’’

While developments were happening on that side of the business, it did not affect what was happening with IDEA Services, she said.