Submission No 89
INQUIRY INTO IMPLEMENTATION OF THE NATIONAL DISABILITY INSURANCE SCHEME AND THE PROVISION OF DISABILITY SERVICES IN NEW SOUTH WALES
Name: Name suppressed Date Received: 11 July 2018
Partially Confidential
I am making this submission on behalf of my son (26 years old) who is an NDIS participant, is Plan Managed and has Support Coordination. I am 67 years old and I am ’s mother and carer. has cerebral palsy with significant physical issues and relies on a powered wheelchair to maximize his independence.
NDIS Core Supports - Community Participation is working well as already had workers in place under the old NSW Community Participation Programme. – We were not receiving any Daily Living Supports prior to NDIS under the old Home Care Service. These supports were very difficult to obtain as living in a rural area local providers did not have enough workers trained to cope with the influx of services required when NDIS came into our area. We have just got these services in place 7 months into ’s plan.
Improved Daily Living requires physiotherapy. This was provided by the hospital before. NDIS should provide this now. However, no local physio rooms have a hoist and home visits are very expensive. At this point, no service is in place and the money allocated to Support Coordination has run out. had to find a new OT when NDIS commenced. His previous OT worked with NSW Community Health and they no longer accept NDIS clients. It took 4 months before a local OT could accept him as a client. has very specialized seating requirements and now we have to travel to Canberra to the Cerebral Palsy Alliance. To get them to come to us would use up all our funds in this area very quickly.
's plan has money allocated for equipment which appears to be quite generous. Applications
have been made for equipment but to date none has been received. The whole process seems very cumbersome and we are wishing for a return of Enable.
Summary NDIS has posed significant challenges and frustrations to get supports and equipment in place. Hopefully, this will improve. NDIS was supposedly bringing choice and control to participants but sadly this has not been ’s experience.