Page 814 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 20 March 2019
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(b) appropriate programmes to better meet the needs of Canberrans from a CALD background living with a disability.
The introduction of the national disability insurance scheme is probably the single most significant policy and fiscal change for the disability sector since federation. The NDIS was intended to be the driving force in transforming the lives of people with disabilities. The ACT took the brave step to become an NDIS trial site from 1 July 2014 and the first to undertake a whole-of-area rollout. It was warmly embraced and seen as an opportunity for people to be able to move to individual choice and control over what they needed and how they wanted to live their lives.
The ACT government made the decision to gradually withdraw specialist disability and therapy services and early intervention services, and in 2016 the ACT became the first jurisdiction in Australia to accept all eligible participants into the scheme. But, as with all things that are a first, the NDIS both nationally and here in the ACT has been beset with challenges. We have all heard stories about the underestimation of how many would be included in the scheme in the first place, the failure to attract sufficient service providers, and the development and delivery of individual plans being a hit and miss affair with some people delighted and others shattered by their experiences in negotiating their new living and financial support arrangements.
At the government level there was enormous upheaval in service delivery arrangements. The familiar frontline services offered by the Community Services Directorate all changed and 500 frontline roles were gone. For many people relying on those services this was a loss of familiar contacts and familiar arrangements. Today, five years later, things have become a little better but there are still enormous gaps, unintended consequences, frustration and anger in many quarters. The Minister for Disability has not had an easy introduction to ministerial responsibility in dealing with these complex issues.
The ongoing uncertainty of what and who might qualify under the NDIS has waxed and waned and continues today. People living with psychosocial difficulties have been particularly let down with continuing uncertainty about whether they qualify. We know that the lack of support for equipment and assistive technology was another unintended gap with not-for-profit organisations and ACT Health often left to fill the gap in providing much needed mobility equipment.
We know the ongoing issues about disability advocacy groups who are almost but unintentionally left out of fiscal arrangements. Assumptions have been made that such services would somehow continue and be included in individual plans, but they were not.
Umbrella groups like SHOUT and individual service delivery advocacy groups like Bosom Buddies and Pegasus find themselves in nowhere land, and rounds of temporary top-ups, money for strategic planning exercises that were probably only appropriate for some but not all groups caused enormous concern, frustration and fear within the disability community. We know SHOUT is now on somewhat safer financial ground, but there are others that are still feeling their way in this new world order.
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