2 recent articles I have read,
discuss the issues for people who may not be accessing services under the new
paradigm of the NDIS.
There are lots of positives
under the new scheme, however as Jenny Green and Associate Professor Jane Mears
in their article, The Implementation of
the NDIS: Who Wins, Who Loses? (reference 1) state "On balance the
individual funding was more likely to be used by people of working age with low
support needs (from Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and
Indigenous Affairs 2010,
p.13)."
Think about the implications of
this type of data on the people you support.
How many of the people you
support, fit the category of both working age and low support needs?
People with Complex Communication
Needs are most often seen as having high support needs, and many also have
difficulty advocating for themselves. How many people with Complex Communication
Needs are accessing the NDIS? How many are getting a meaningful plan for their
ongoing support and future needs? How many are getting reasonable access to therapy
assessments and support and training for support staff? What
do you think needs to be put in place to ensure this significant group of
people are accessing the services they need?
As stated by Soldatic et al in
their article Intellectual Disability
and Complex Intersections: Marginalisation, (reference 2) the NDIS is an opt-in model of
service. In their article they draw attention to the work of Leipoldt’s and
Hallahan who have suggested "that relying on the market to deliver
individual choice is a problematic framing for the full realisation of
disability rights. This is partly because a market-based system requires sociocultural
literacy in “choice and self-interest” The authors go on to indicate
"Numerous disability groups have also suggested that there are a group of
people at the margins who experience multiple and complex forms of disadvantage
and, therefore, do not necessarily have this literacy.” (Sociocultural
Literacy).
They
also go on to suggest, “For these
groups, accessing the NDIS may be a major challenge. If the onus is on the individual
to prove his or her eligibility on a case-by-case basis, people with
disabilities with complex social needs are unlikely to have the sociocultural
literacy to interpret and activate administrative rules for their own
individual benefit.”
These are important issues to
discuss, as much of the discussion in the media about the NDIS is of the huge
benefits for people with a disability. Often those that appear to be missing
out, are those with little experience of advocacy. Are people with multiple and complex needs,
including social and mental health needs, or poor socio-economic backgrounds and/or
poor education going to be able to meaningfully access the NDIS?
We will hear the NDIS is meeting
benchmarks, but who is this for? Who is really accessing the NDIS, and who is
missing out? What services and professional supports are people being able to
access?
Interestingly the latest quarterly report from the NDIS, has a breakdown of costs/client for support plans.
In that report the NDIS provide a 2 part analysis and so in one analysis,
removes the costs of the group of people who have accessed the NDIS from institutional
type environments, as being an aberration of costs, due to their high support needs.
It would appear people with high support needs will not be a large proportion
of the NDIS model. Is that really the case, or is it the case that people with
high support needs have a range of other issues making it more difficult for
them to know how to access the NDIS.
Cathy
Cathy Basterfield
Consultant Speech Pathologist
Access Easy English
0466 579 855
References
1.
Jenny
Green & Associate Professor Jane Mears, The Implementation of the NDIS: Who Wins, Who Loses? Cosmopolitan
Civil Societies Journal 2014, 6(2): 3915,-
2. Karen Soldatic, Georgia van Toorn, Leanne Dowse
& Kristy Muir (2014) Intellectual
Disability and Complex Intersections: Marginalisation under the National
Disability Insurance Scheme, Research and Practice in Intellectual and
Developmental Disabilities, 1:1, 6-16,
DOI:
10.1080/23297018.2014.906050
