Disability support facing NDIS crisis
Cracks are appearing in claims that the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) is an advance for people with disabilities. The hurried roll-out of the scheme, expected to be complete by 1 July in some areas, has been marked by confusion and frustration for disability support staff, agencies, service users and their families and carers.
Under the scheme, disability support packages will be doled out to eligible applicants who can use their packages to purchase approved support. However, NDIS access, assessment and planning teams are severely under-resourced. There are widespread complaints that service users with complex needs are being assessed during a single phone call by staff untrained in disability support. NDIS representatives have admitted that most assessments will not be face to face.
Generic NDIS plans are being thrust on people with limited capacity to challenge the decisions made about their needs. Kevin Stone, head of the Victorian Advocacy League for Individuals with Disability, recently described the scheme as “mean minded”. Speaking to the Sydney Morning Herald, he said the NDIS was a “cookie-cutter approach” that had “trashed” the hope with which many had greeted the announcement of a national disability support scheme.
Feeding the sense of crisis, funding for existing disability support services has been drastically cut back over the last few years to make way for the NDIS. Major gaps now exist where services have been shut down before new NDIS-funded services are up and running. This has left some people with disabilities without support workers or services for extended periods.
Funding insecurity has led to a wave of service closures and mergers. The NDIS was supposed to increase choice for service users, but there are now far fewer service providers than just a few years ago. Writing an opinion article for the Newcastle Herald, Peter Bisset, who has cerebral palsy, explained his concerns about the trend: “The effects are being felt, as smaller providers who can focus on the needs of the individual are being squeezed out of the marketplace, and the voices of clients diluted due to the expanding influence of large service providers”.
State governments in Victoria, NSW and WA are also using the NDIS roll-out to wind up the public disability sector, paving the way for the complete privatisation of disability support.
Disability advocacy groups and disability workers have mounted a public campaign against the move, saying that governments are using the NDIS as an excuse to abandon the sector. If the public sector moves out, private operators will move in to grab whatever cash they can from the new scheme. Unions and disability advocates argue that the privatisation of the sector will leave people with disabilities vulnerable to shonky operators and cost-cutting measures.
“I’m terrified about my future … I have no intention of being at the mercy of a NDIS that is largely privatised, with no oversight, no proper regulation and no counterbalance. I feel like we’re all sleepwalking into this”, Peter Bisset told ABC radio.
In Victoria, the union representing many disability support workers, the Health and Community Services Union, has pointed out that if the state government hands over service delivery to non-government organisations and private companies, workers will likely experience significant wage cuts.
Agencies that will now switch to NDIS funding have spent the last several years using the threat of NDIS insecurity to hold down workers’ wages and cut conditions. The hourly price funding for agencies delivering services under NDIS is far lower than in the previous model. Agencies across the disability and mental health sector are now talking about cutting back on staff costs, training and supervision.
Upper management at Mind Australia, one of the country’s largest mental health support organisations, explained to staff in meetings about the transition to NDIS, “We’re still a not-for-profit organisation but we’re also not-for-loss”.
Another significant player in the field, Neami National, has gone as far as setting up a shell company called Me Well which is offering new jobs on lower pay. The name change will also protect the Neami brand from any fallout from the debacles likely in a service in which less qualified staff will be managing bigger case loads.
The shambolic transition to funding, stories of lost support and immediate attacks on wages all compound the fact that the long-term damage of the NDIS will be that it locks in a user-pays system for disability and mental health support. Services will no longer receive ongoing funding to stay open and to help anybody who walks through the door. They will survive only if enough eligible package holders buy the services they sell. If people needing support are assessed as not eligible for an NDIS package or their package is inadequate or inappropriate, they can still buy the services they need, with their own money of course. The same will be true if the government cuts future funding to the NDIS. People who can afford it will still be able to buy the best quality care available, while most will have to settle for what they can afford.
Speaking to delegates from the Australian Services Union at a forum in 2015, a key architect of the NDIS, Labor parliamentarian Jenny Macklin, said, “If anyone says that the NDIS is going to cost too much, tell them that to continue with the current system would have cost more”. That is to say, the NDIS is motivated by the same agenda as every health and welfare “reform”for decades now – shuffling a small pack of funding to produce cheaper care and higher production from an underpaid and exhausted workforce.
