Sam endured four miserable years in a disability group home. The NDIS was meant to change that – but reports of neglect are surging

‘I don’t necessarily blame the individual support workers, I do blame the system which enables this type of behaviour,’ Sam Petersen says. Photograph: Ellen Smith/The Guardian

Sam Petersen describes living in a disability group home as death by a thousand cuts.

The four years Sam spent in a group home were marked by severe understaffing, a product of a system where cost-cutting was the priority, which led to neglect of Sam’s most basic needs.