After Mosman Park, families warn: “we’re running out of road”

Jonathan Shar
2 days ago
3 min read

Content note: This story discusses suspected family violence deaths and suicide in general terms. It does not describe methods.

The deaths of four members of a family in Mosman Park last week have left a community reeling — and reignited a difficult, urgent conversation across Australia: what happens when families supporting people with disability are left carrying impossible loads, with too little respite, too few services, and no crisis circuit-breaker when things start to collapse.

Police say the incident is being investigated as a suspected murder-suicide, with authorities also noting that there was no ongoing risk to the public. Reporting has suggested the teenagers in the household had significant health needs and that the family received external support.

It’s essential not to speculate about motives or reduce a tragedy to a single cause.

Disability does not explain violence, and most families under immense pressure never harm anyone. But advocates and frontline workers say these deaths land in a context

Australia can no longer ignore: a growing care gap where families are expected to provide high-intensity, round-the-clock support, often with fragmented formal services — and where many carers are exhausted, isolated, and afraid of what happens if they can’t keep going.

The hidden workforce propping up disability support

Australia relies on unpaid carers at a staggering scale. The Australian Bureau of Statistics reports around 3 million carers in 2022, including about 1.2 million primary carers, and a significant share of primary carers live with disability themselves.

The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare notes that many carers experience unmet need for respite — in 2022, only 49% of primary carers reported no unmet need for respite care.

That gap is not an abstract statistic. It’s the difference between a parent sleeping through the night and going months without rest; between a couple being able to keep working and sliding into poverty; between a family absorbing one more crisis and tipping over.

In its 2024 wellbeing survey, Carers Australia found carers most commonly reported fears about the future, money stress, and anxiety about whether they could continue caring.

“Respite exists” doesn’t mean respite is accessible

On paper, some families can access short-term respite through the National Disability Insurance Scheme. The National Disability Insurance Agency says eligible participants generally receive funding for up to 28 days per year, usually in blocks of up to 14 days at a time.

But families and service providers describe practical barriers that can make “available” respite feel like a mirage:

Workforce shortages, especially outside major cities
High support needs that some respite providers can’t safely accommodate
Behaviour support complexity, where the only suitable providers have long waitlists
Cost and co-contributions families can’t absorb
Admin burden — booking, transport, care plans, medication protocols, and crisis contingencies — done by carers already at capacity

The NDIA’s own guideline acknowledges that additional respite may be considered in high-risk situations (for example, where a child may be at risk of entering residential care), but that still depends on functional local supply and timely decisions.

When systems fail, risk concentrates inside the home

Disability policy debates often focus on fraud, provider quality, or eligibility rules. Those issues matter — but tragedies like Mosman Park cut to something more basic: the safety of the care relationship itself.

When support is thin, risk concentrates in the kitchen at 2am — in the lone parent who hasn’t slept, the couple who hasn’t had a break in years, the family juggling complex medical tasks without backup, the carer with their own disability, chronic pain, or depression, trying to keep everyone afloat.

Suicide Prevention Australia has warned that carers can face elevated suicide risk and calls for better data and targeted support.

This is not about blaming carers. It’s about recognising what many families say quietly, for years, before anything changes: love does not replace a service system.

What “breaking point prevention” can look like

Experts and advocates commonly point to a package of practical, preventative reforms — the kinds of supports that reduce crisis load before it becomes dangerous:

Rapid-response respite (hours to days, not weeks) when carers report escalating risk
Carer mental health support that is easy to access and ongoing, not “one-off” counselling
High-intensity in-home support for families managing complex disability and medical needs
Better continuity of care, so families aren’t rebuilding teams after every plan change
Regional workforce strategies that match funding with real service supply
Simpler navigation across the NDIS, health, education, and child/family services — fewer forms, fewer retellings of trauma