7 March 2025
NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission Via email: consultation@ndiscommission.gov.au
Jesuit Social Services welcomes the opportunity to provide this submission to the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission (NDIS Commission) on the Mandatory Registration of supported independent living (SIL) and support coordination.
We support mandatory registration as a critical safeguard for NDIS participants. Drawing on our experience as a registered provider, we offer recommendations to strengthen the registration process to better protect participants, address conflicts of interest within the disability support sector, and improve service quality throughout the NDIS ecosystem.
Jesuit Social Services is a social change organisation working to build a just society where all people can live to their full potential. For over 48 years, we have accompanied the most disadvantaged members of the community, providing services and advocacy in the areas of disability, mental health and wellbeing; housing and homelessness; justice and crime prevention; settlement and community building; education, training and employment; ecological justice; and gender justice, including child sexual abuse prevention.
Jesuit Social Services: current registration status and supports delivered
Jesuit Social Services is a registered NDIS provider, and is accredited against 14 registration groups, including Supported Independent Living and support coordination.
We work with NDIS participants, their care teams and support networks to achieve their personal goals and build capacity across services and programs that align with our registration status, including through:
- Support coordination – we support NDIS participants to understand their NDIS plans, build their ability to make choices, and reduce barriers to accessing supports, by providing Level 2 and Level 3 support coordination.
- Perry House – a Specialist Forensic Disability Accommodation service providing 24-hour support to young men of neuro-diverse background and living with an intellectual disability, who have involvement with the criminal justice system and are experiencing, or at risk of, homelessness. Perry House assists residents to reduce their risk of re-offending, including by establishing links into appropriate support services (in line with their NDIS plan).
- Other programs with a mix of participants who may or may not have a NDIS package, including: Connexions, Individual Support Program, Adult Justice (including ReConnect,
Maribyrnong Community Residential Facility), housing programs, and the Artful Dodgers Studios.
Further, we work with people who live with disability and do not receive support from the NDIS but nonetheless have relevant experiences of, and perspectives on, the NDIS and broader disability support that would be relevant to this consultation.
Transition Arrangements and Timeframes
Jesuit Social Services would not be impacted by the proposed transition arrangements, as we are already registered and accredited as a NDIS provider. However, based on our experience, we have perspectives to offer about the impact on the broader sector.
We would describe our experience of the registration process for a not-for-profit organisation as arduous. The extensive nature of this process may not be appropriate for small providers who will now be required to register. We recommend the NDIS Commission apply a risk-tiering to the registration process, as well as assessing and managing the risk that smaller providers may leave the system due to their limited capacity to meet mandatory registration requirements.
Jesuit Social Services engages external accreditors to review our registration and provide a rating on a three-year basis, with an additional mid-point evaluation after 18 months. We have found that the accreditation process does not provide us with meaningful feedback beyond simple descriptions of attainment level (conformity with elements of best practice; conformity; minor non-conformity; major non-conformity). This process involves a desktop review of organisational documents and interviews with a select number of staff and board members, undertaken by interstate accreditors who lack understanding of our local context. The result is a system lacking the nuance and feedback that would incentivise and support providers to achieve best practice or other high benchmarks appropriate to their local context.
We recommend the National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIA) design the mandatory registration and accreditation process such that it encourages and incentivises high standards of support and service delivery, as opposed to a focus on conformity/minimum attainment.
Strengthening the registration process
Registration must serve as a purposeful exercise for safeguarding participants and maintaining high standards among service providers. Despite the challenges and limitations our organisation has experienced, we are supportive of mandatory registration, particularly given the vulnerability of the cohort we work with.
We are currently seeing registered providers operate unethically despite their registration status, which may be symptomatic of the nature of the registration and accreditation process, as outlined above. We regularly encounter highly predatory support coordination practices from other
organisations and sole providers where participants’ choices and access in relation to their own packages are severely restricted. Our staff have experienced difficulties addressing concerns about these coordinators, and despite numerous complaints we have made to the NDIS Commission, these providers often maintain their registration status. This points to significant issues with the Commission’s capacity to adequately investigate and respond to complaints and reports of fraudulent or unethical behaviour.
There is a clear need for strong regulation, particularly of large providers. The NDIS Commission must be provided with adequate resources to:
- develop a more robust and responsive complaints and feedback mechanism, including staff who are appropriately trained to assess and respond to complaints, and comprehensive and publicly accessible information about how to lodge a complaint and what to expect
- undertake thorough investigation and enforcement, including sanctions and registration revocation where unethical or inappropriate conduct is substantiated.
We recommend more rigorous registration requirements for higher risk categories, such as site visits for SIL services.
During any transition period, NDIA Area Coordinators should support participants to bridge any gaps in support coordination that may occur.
Other considerations
We recommend creating an online register that identifies which providers have specific experience and expertise to work with certain cohorts, including people with complex disabilities and comorbidities, and people with intersecting vulnerabilities such as justice system involvement. This would help coordinators to find providers appropriately matched to participants’ needs.
We also recommend that the design of mandatory registration include mechanisms to monitor and manage potential conflicts of interest. A significant concern is the practice where SIL and core support providers sublease private rentals to NDIS participants, making their tenancy contingent on accessing supports through that same provider. While we recognise that this arrangement can provide housing solutions for participants who might otherwise face homelessness, it creates a serious conflict of interest. Participants are less likely to raise complaints about inadequate support if they believe doing so will put their housing at risk. The NDIS Commission has acknowledged the power imbalance occurring for providers of both housing and living supports1, and must introduce appropriate oversight measures to manage the provider’s conflict and ensure that their tenancy arrangements with NDIS participants align with Residential Tenancy Act requirements.
1 “Next steps – regulation for in-home and housing supports: Discussion paper”, NDIS Commission, August 2024. Pp6. (Weblink).
Finally, we note that there is an inherent conflict of interest for organisations that provide both support coordination and direct support services. This is an issue that the NDIS Commission should examine more closely and develop strategies to manage effectively alongside the introduction of mandatory registration for support coordination providers.
We would welcome the opportunity to discuss any of the issues raised in this submission.
Yours sincerely,
Julie Edwards Chief Executive Officer