Kurri Kurri Community Services closes doors on disability support program

Chief executive officer of the coalfields charity, David Aston, said that disability support, as a business proposition, was a difficult thing to do sustainably.

"We are not as good at running it operationally or with financial stability," Mr Aston said.

"And that is very common across the industry. Doing NDIS (National Disability Insurance Scheme) work is hard, very hard to make a sustainable business out of that ... but there are partners we have who specialise in that and Resolute Support was one of those."

NDIS participants were being informed ahead of the closure at the end of this month and were being offered the option to travel over to Resolute Support, he said.

KKCS would continue to provide other services, such as Hunter Commercial Services, which offers support to people living with disability to find paid and supported employment, its NDIS-related Coordinator of Support work, aged care, and allied health services.

There are about 30 NDIS participants affected by the closure of KKCS-run disability support services, down from about three times that number in the middle of last year.

The decision comes off the back of a very turbulent year for the organisation which has lost at least seven senior members of staff, as well as support workers, and faced allegations of fraud and wrong doing, which have been denied.

Mr Aston said he was comfortable there was no evidence of either, but he agreed that some activities of past employees would not have passed the pub test.

"There have been a couple of instances where, I'd say probably four or five instances that I've heard about or seen, that don't pass the pub test," Mr Aston said.

"But they have been dealt with and (the people involved) no longer work for this organisation.

"I can guarantee you, guarantee you in my position that I have not seen anything that qualifies for anything that we need to be taking specific action on other than to ensure that everything we do going forward is against the right policy, supporting the right procedure and maintaining the right standards.

"I have done a substantial amount of investigation. From where I'm standing, this organisation has struggled with scaling over the growth but not with systemic intent. And there have been a couple of instances where we could probably be a bit more diplomatic in the way we respond, but at its core it's not breaking any law."

It had been more than 60 days since reports of an NDIS investigation first emerged, and if there had been a case to answer - if a formal investigation had been launched - they would know by now, Mr Aston said.

Participants affected by the closure of KKCS disability support services would be supported to make a choice to engage with Resolute Support or another service provider, he said.

Hunter Resolute was contacted.

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