Inquiry into Implementation of the National Disability Insurance Scheme and the Provision of Disability Services in New South Wales
Submission No 117
Name: Name suppressed Date Received: 30 July 2018
Partially Confidential
Living in a small community in rural/regional NSW made accessing the NDIS more complicated. I have several friends that also accessed the NDIS and every single one of us had a different experience, dependant on who we ended up having to speak to. There doesn’t appear to be any consistency, even when there is only one provider that is conducting planning meetings within our area. My communications with the LAC often go unanswered. Meaning any follow up or linkages to be done by the LAC don’t happen and I haven’t heard from them again. Once a plan is in place, the biggest hurdle is lack of services available. Either the service is not available full-stop, they are all full, or you need to travel all day to get there, attend an appointment and return. The stress, expense and disruption to family routines by far out-way the benefit of attending the service. Travel is only included if a provider needs to travel to you - meaning a support that was already in place or organised prior to having your NDIS plan approved would include a travel component. There is no assistance for you to have to travel to appointments. Just traveling to the LAC is over 40km away. The removal of respite is also of major concern. I am a sole parent with no family support, living in a community that has no services of it’s own. Respite was always difficult due to the nature of how it works. The main area of disability in our household is Autism. This means we need consistency. Respite cannot provide a consistent approach as it depends on what staff are available. That doesn’t work for us. We need to have the same person, the same routines. So I just have to go without. There was no consideration given to the carers report I completed that outlined how much I was struggling. In fact respite under NDIS doesn’t exist. So am I happy that we were successful in obtaining NDIS? Yes. Do we need it? Yes! But can I use it? No!