Submission No 86
INQUIRY INTO IMPLEMENTATION OF THE NATIONAL DISABILITY INSURANCE SCHEME AND THE PROVISION OF DISABILITY SERVICES IN NEW SOUTH WALES
Name: Name suppressed Date Received: 10 July 2018
Partially Confidential
NDIS has been an excellent form of assistance for my wife who is Permanently disabled through no fault of her own. She was bitten by a Mosquito in 1989 whilst holidaying in Northern Queensland, the venom from the bite left her with left side paralysis ever since, she is now 64 years of age and also suffering from a high level of Parkinson’s Disease as well as many other issues due to all the ongoing health problems associated with the Paralysis and Parkinson’s.
Since being approved for the NDIS in August 2017, the overwhelming assistance by the NDIS Planner has been outstanding. With voice control in our home my wife is able to turn appliances on and off without help, the weekly assistance by a Nurse to provide for her health requirements and various household assistance has been wonderful. I am my wife’s carer, but have excessive back issues due to the lifting of my wife over the past 20 years, so the assistance we receive through NDIS funding has allowed our gardens and home to be maintained whilst living a lifestyle we should all be able to carry on with to survive comfortably. Therefore we have not needed to sell our home of 40 years to live in a nursing facility nor retirement home where one becomes a vegetable, we are able to carry on normal day activities and living habits in our own home which provides us with comfort.
The supports provided by NDIS are unprecedented and very simple to manage, providing of course that there is adequate budgeting approved to deal with the costs of replacing wheelchairs, beds and overall assistance which the NDIS has catered very well for us.
So, I hope that the NDIS can continue in it’s present form. There should be NO change to something that works and takes the burden off the community as well as friends and neighbours. It is good that we still continue to have choice and control over our lives which is very important. What is the saying “IF IT AIN’T BROKE, DON’T FIX IT”. The NDIS scheme should continue, monitored correctly and efficiently it will save society a lot of money in the long term.
There should of course be controls put into place to ensure that suppliers of equipment to the public do not take advantage of the scheme. One very certain benefit of the NDIS scheme is that people are able to find employment in an area that was once a very specialized environment. The caring and assistance to the disabled community is very, very important.