Page 4375 - Week 14 - Thursday, 28 November 2013
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
Most importantly, the approach we are taking is not just about the government rolling out a series of information sessions. While information sessions, of course, have an important part to play in getting information, for some people another step is needed to enable that information to be translated into something which makes sense for them and which can be applied to their life.
This work will be led by people with a disability including disability related to mental illness. A peer working group—people who have a lived experience of disability either directly and personally or by virtue of their relationship with a family member—has been established to guide and steer the community conversations across the ACT about the NDIS. Community conversations provide the opportunity for people to hear and learn from each other, to share stories, for people to be inspired and challenged by their peers, people who have walked the same or at least a similar journey. Community conversations—formal, informal, brief, incidental or intense—are means of social and cultural change, and the opportunities of the NDIS require significant cultural change.
We are investing $150,000 in the development and delivery of workshops to enable people to gain some understanding of what choice and control means, how to plan, how to weigh up options, understand their rights and to speak up for themselves. These skills and experience will be valuable as the NDIS is introduced. These workshops will provide an opportunity for people with disabilities and their families to look at what a good life for them may be and to plan what supports and services they can acquire.
As we work with our commonwealth colleagues to finalise the bilateral agreement outlining our respective responsibilities through the ACT launch and transition stages of the NDIS, there are particular imperatives and decisions for the ACT. The opposition have asked many times about what we have been doing to ensure the NDIS is implemented, and I would like now to take some time to explain the major pieces of conceptual, actuarial, and, in the end, very practical work that the NDIS task force has been undertaking in partnership with all the mainstream government services and our funded community agencies.
We will agree with the commonwealth in February 2014 the major transition points and the mechanisms to move the entire ACT disability service system across to the commonwealth and to the national disability agency from July of next year through to July 2016. Each one of us in the ACT has a fundamental human right to access universal services such as health, housing, justice and education services. Providers of universal services are obliged to make reasonable adjustments to enable people to access those services.
This work has particular relevance to disability, therapy and mental health service provision and, of course, it also relates also to programs delivered by the Education and Training and Justice and Community Safety directorates. Major decisions to be made are: what services are currently and should continue to be provided by mainstream services to people with a disability in the same way every Australian expects to get mainstream services, like hospital, community health care, public
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video