The decision to replace nurses with disability support workers has angered the nurses' union, which wants an urgent meeting with the government after its members at Stockton called for a halt to the process of transferring residents and staff into the group homes.

Nurses' union organiser Nola Scilinato said yesterday that about 50 "disappointed and angry" Stockton Centre nurses attended a branch meeting on Friday to plan their response to the job cuts announced last week by the NSW government's Family and Community Services agency.

A similar meeting is planned for this afternoon at Kanangra, with members considering a range of "work to rule" propositions in an effort to bring FACS to the negotiating table.

Word of the job advertisements swept across the Stockton Centre last Friday, when staff noticed that New Horizons - which was allocated homes in Port Stephens, Maitland and Fletcher - was advertising for disability support workers, generally known as DSWs.

Although the Newcastle Herald was not able to contact the Cerebral Palsy Alliance - which has homes in suburban Newcastle and Lake Macquarie - a spokesperson for the third operator, The Disability Trust, confirmed that it, too, was advertising for DSWs.

Disability Trust chief operating officer Edward Birt said he understood how people could be upset about the recruitment of DSWs at the same time that more than 120 currently employed nurses had been told they were not wanted, but the numbers of staff transferring was decided by FACS.

"I can't comment on the transfer plan, that's the government's, but I can imagine there might be some upset there," Mr Birt said.

Mr Birt said it was too early to know the exact staffing numbers in each group home, but he assured people who were concerned that The Disability Trust had substantial experience in providing the degree of care needed in complex disability cases.

He confirmed that the group homes would be staffed using what the sector knew as a "mixed model" of care, which included nurses as well as disability support workers.

He did not know why the 76 endorsed enrolled nurses (known as EENs and "endorsed" to be able to give medications) were not included in the transfer.

"We will be going through all of this house by house, establishing the rosters on the needs of the individual residents," Mr Birt said.

"There will be houses with residents with very high needs and others where the needs will not be so great on an individual basis."

Mr Birt said The Disability Trust took over the Mount View residential centre in Wollongong a year ago and that this had been a successful transition as far as patient care was concerned.

He confirmed, though, that Mount View was slated for closure under the same policy as Stockton, Kanangra and Tomaree, and that some families were similarly opposed to the associated group home proposal.

A number of long-time Stockton staff have told the Herald that they fear for the safety of the residents once they move from their present "nursing led" care to the group homes, where the philosophy is to "support" the person and to give them choice.

But Mr Birt moved to counter these concerns, saying that staff at the Disability Trust's group homes monitored those residents who needed it for whatever their particular health concerns were, such as difficulty with swallowing, epilepsy, bowel care and psychiatric episodes.

Stockton Centre advocates have also raised the death last month of a 20-year-old woman in a western Sydney group home as the sort of thing they feared.

AAP reported that the woman, Merna Aprem, who had epilepsy and autism, had apparently died of drowning after being found unconscious in the bath.

A spokesperson for the group home operator said the house was "without a doubt" properly staffed with sufficiently experienced employees.

But she claimed the organisation had not known about the woman's "overnight seizures" and would have applied to the NDIS for funding to "properly meet those needs" if it had.