Submission No 224
INQUIRY INTO IMPLEMENTATION OF THE NATIONAL DISABILITY INSURANCE SCHEME AND THE PROVISION OF DISABILITY SERVICES IN NEW SOUTH WALES
Name: Ms Maria Munoz Date Received: 9 August 2018
The Director, Portfolio Committee No.2-Health and Committee Services. Parliamentary Inquiry into the implementation of the NDIS and the provision of disability services in New South Wales.
Although the NDIS has been wished for from within the field, the way it has been acted in this estate of ours is nothing less than dysfunctional. I wish to express the following points of concern:
- The same case manager trying to clarify any issue will have a variety of replies, 3 different officers within NDIS will give 3 different replies to the same question.
- I was transferred from FACS to The Benevolent Society. I left it after less than a year. Not only TBS ignores what Disability is, it ignored people who wanted to let them know about FACS clients and their complexities.
- Case Management has been put aside by NDIS, leaving the highly complex participants to fend for themselves. In some cases they can’t cope at all.
- I recognize that for some of our clients - especially the mildly disabled - things will be good under NDIS; but they are not the majority of the people that FACS used to care for.
- The speed of the NDIS implementation process is somewhat working against the people that the insurer says it is to work for and with (the participants).
- The remaining Case Managers are to work as a Service Coordinator: - practically a “using the phone” position, after the contracts are signed.
- It is quite disconcerting to think of the participants in terms of KPI and percentage of money made in the month - this inside the organization I worked for after the transfer; billable hours became the main inspiration in this new world of NDIS.
- NDIS gives some services to people who do not requested them and fail to give to the ones that need it. The clinical support is vital for some clients and the clinicians are to work not more than 10 sessions in average in a 12 months period.
- There is no doubt that some of the Planners of NDIS were of exceptional professionalism and knowledge, but some were unable to grasp the issues presented to them during the planning meetings…I wonder what training they did have and the kind of exposure to the scope of intellectual disability they had prior to their position of planners.
- NSW Government has absolved itself of all responsibility to people with a disability and fast trucked NDIS without adequate consultation. I believe that for some it will be ideal, but a disaster for others. The problem is that - it appears to me - the government doesn’t have a way of addressing this group that can’t “fit” into the system, the people living the disaster.
- The words used to promote NDIS are a work of art. They speak of human values, of empowerment, of dreams been attained…However, NDIS is as convoluted and difficult system to access and to operate on. How can it be effective? Furthermore, NDIS is effective to whom? Is NSW saving money? I do not believe this to be the case. Actions that create despair in parts of the community create trouble for the future.
Finally, in personal terms I lost a profession. It is nothing compared with the constant struggle to which some of the complex needs participants have to live till the day they die, with a support that is emulating a lottery system.
Kind regards, Maria Munoz Former Case Manager to the Benevolent Society and to FACS