Submission No 72
INQUIRY INTO IMPLEMENTATION OF THE NATIONAL DISABILITY INSURANCE SCHEME AND THE PROVISION OF DISABILITY SERVICES IN NEW SOUTH WALES
Name: Name suppressed Date Received: 13 July 2018
Partially Confidential
To whom it may concern,
I have been using the NDIS for almost 2 years now. I love the concept. It will and already has started to change my life. I am a blind citizen of western Sydney and it has greatly increased my access to information, the community etc. my comments however about problematic areas in my experience are the following. I will keep it as short as possible.
Knowledge gap
There is a knowledge gap for me as a client. I was essentially given my plan and told good luck. It was never explained how to use my NDIS plan, how the money is to be used in what context and what the terminology meant and what to expect in a given interaction or circumstance when using your plan. There is a difficulty when the people administering the program are also not familiar with many disabilities or resources specific to those disabilities. My local area coordinator was not familiar with the my gov site and could not therefore direct me as to what was essential to know about administering your own plan, what you need to know, what you need to be on top of, what to expect before, and after a service depending on the type of service or plan you are on.
Buck passing
I also had the experience where I was being passed around 3 people, my local area coordinator, a service provider and the NDIA when seeking information about my items after an assessment. One couldn’t tell me and said it was the others job and so on. It took 5 months to resolve.
The my gov website and ndis website
My final thoughts are just about the websites involved in circulating information or administering your plan. There is no information to explain what the jargon means, sometimes there are just service booking dates with prices, reference numbers and other numbers. It doesn’t explain anything; there is nothing intuitive about it.
AS I said, great concept. It is changing my life but I’d hate to see it stumble or be seen as a white elephant because it was administered poorly when some of these things are quite fixable.
Thank you for your time.