The Government has closed down the Cognitive Impairment Diversion Program but our campaign will continue!

07 July 2020

Thanks to your support, our campaign for the NSW government to continue funding the Cognitive Impairment Diversion Program (CIDP) received great support.

More than 4,500 people signed our petition, and our supporters continued the fight right up to 30 June.

We could see that the campaign was having an impact and we had hopes the Attorney General would reverse the decision to remove funding for the CIDP. However, he didn’t, so the CIDP has now closed.

The closure of this unique and highly successful diversion program is a great blow. Without this program, people with intellectual disability who get into trouble with the law are much more likely to be sent to gaol.

The campaign goes on

Our campaign will continue despite this setback.

The Department of Communities and Justice has said clearly that it wants to establish a diversion program for people with cognitive impairment that extends well beyond the two local courts for which the CIDP was funded. The Department has committed to consulting with CID as it develops plans for a new program.

We’ll be campaigning for the coming state budget to include funding to re-establish a program like the CIDP, and with a much broader geographical focus than before.

You’ll hear more from us about this in coming weeks.

In the meantime, we ask that you phone or email the Attorney General to tell him how disappointed you are that the groundbreaking CIDP has been closed, and urge him to establish a similar diversion program that operates across the whole of NSW, not just at two courts.

You could also tell him how important this program was for Indigenous Australians, who were over a quarter of CIDP participants.