The Disability Services Commission (DSC) was formed by the ‘Disability Services Act 1993 Western Australia’. The DSC merged and replaced the Authority for the Intellectually Handicapped (AIH, or ‘Irrabeena’) and the Bureau for Disability Services. The Act made the DSC responsible to the Minister for Disability Services, with its key functions being to ‘unify and streamline formal service provision for all Western Australians with disability’.
In their submission to the Inquiry into Children in Institutional Care in 2003, the Disability Services Commission stated that it had no ‘statutory responsibility for the care and protection of children’ (p.2) but that it relied on a range of ‘systemic safeguarding mechanisms’ in place to protect the rights of people with disabilities to ‘live and receive services in an environment free from any type of abuse, neglect and exploitation’ (p.4).
From July 2017 The Disability Services Commission became part of the Department of Communities. The services the Commission provides remained the same following this change.