Current NDIS administration (and distress for severely disabled persons)
The following observations, based on administering small and large programs in five Commonwealth Government departments over a forty year period, lead to the conclusion that current NDIS administration, faced with enormous challenges, is of serious concern.
The NDiS modus operandi ts to use call centres for both NDIS and their outsourced agents, FEROS, which are sprinkled around various States. After making eight telephone calls in 12 weeks after a long wait we were connected to employees, often recent arrivals from overseas not yet familiar or trained in Australian administrative norms, who were reluctant to provide as a matter of course thelr Christian name and their city of operation. It seems impossible to talk with the same call centre employee, of either NDIS or FEROS, twice. The annual assessor, FEROS on behalf of NDIS, has no access to relevant Information Including one’s previous submission which provides professional and medical assessments. FEROS and NDIS therefore ignore medicai reports made to them when making a quick annual assessment. NDIS clients and FEROS itself, only gain access to the NDIS website on 60% of their attempts. FEROS and NDIS staff in call centres can only access a simplistic list of expenditures; they have no access to one’s submission or previously provided medical reports. After 12 months, one’s previous 12 months list of expenditures becomes inaccessible on those desk tops, apparently, for the NDIS call centre staff and to FEROS staff. FEROS or NDIS made simple arithmetical! errors, and ignored hard fought for support that was in piace from the ACT Government for seven years and for the first six months of the relevant NDIS first year, when in cavalier fashion they halved a seriously disabied person’s current support.
According to ACT Disability, Aged and Carer Advocacy Service (ADACAS), as at 4 September 2017, they have already received requests for over 2,500 appeals against NDIS decisions. FEROS staff say they have no Code of Conduct for their organization. There is no Code of Conduct accessible on the FEROS website. NDIS should mandate that the Australian Public Service Code of Conduct for employees, which requires staff to maintain courtesy and respect (eg returning a phone call or an email within a reasonable period of time, not after an eight week delay), is adapted by FEROS, and that FEROS employees are made aware of that Code. Requiring that the outsourced agencies such as FEROS adopt a Code of Conduct could be done immediately by the relevant Minister at little or no
cost.
We have written to our effective local member Minister Senator Zed Seselja and asked him to take up these concerns with Minister Christian Porter.