Page 845 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 22 March 2017
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organisation announce to the media last week that it intended to make a decision on closure by the end of March. Unfortunately there has been some public misrepresentation of both my public and private comments and the government’s overall position.
In my meeting with SHOUT, as in my public statements, I thought I had made it clear that the ACT government is committed to ensuring that community organisations that rely on SHOUT are supported to continue their valuable work. These are organisations such as Parkinson’s ACT, ACT Down Syndrome Association, ACT ME/CFS Society and People with Disabilities ACT, as well as a number of the organisations that Ms Lee referred to. I know active members of each of these associations and I fully and completely appreciate the important work that they and the other SHOUT members do in our community. Since the news of SHOUT’s decision last week, I have been, along with my office and directorate, seeking to reassure SHOUT member organisations and associates that the government will make sure they continue to get the support that they need.
It is the case that in order to deliver the support, the government had previously urged SHOUT to apply for information, linkages and capacity building funding under the national disability insurance scheme for which applications closed on 8 March. It is also the case that the Community Services Directorate had been working with community organisations like SHOUT since the commencement of the NDIS transition which, as Ms Lee noted, was in 2013 and had provided SHOUT with a $20,000 grant in 2014 to help it get ready for the NDIS.
Members may be aware that Community Services Directorate officials stated in the annual report hearings on 1 March that they considered that the types of services that SHOUT currently provides actually fit very well with the purposes of the NDIS ILC grants. Indeed, this is why SHOUT received transition funding from the NDIS at 100 per cent of its previous funding levels. Directorate officials also noted that $3 million would be available in this grant round, compared to $1.3 million during transition.
Nevertheless, we have been closely monitoring the transition to the NDIS, including the rollout of ILC, and we did act to recognise the uncertainty facing organisations who were applying for ILC funding by negotiating an additional two months of transitional funding from the commonwealth so that these organisations are now funded until the end of August. This additional funding was intended to provide greater certainty and stability following a delay in the ILC funding rounds. This funding is an extension to the transitional funding of nearly $125,000 for SHOUT that the ACT government negotiated from the commonwealth in 2016-17.
This is something that I think needs to be made clear: the ACT government is not terminating or ceasing SHOUT’s base funding, as has been reported. As part of the reform to disability services under the rollout to the NDIS, SHOUT’s 2016-17 funding was negotiated by the ACT government from the commonwealth government. This funding is now part of the transition arrangements for the commonwealth ILC grants program under the NDIS, which is why SHOUT was encouraged to apply for ILC funding.
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