Submission to:

Joint Standing Committee on the National Disability Insurance Scheme

PO Box 6100 Parliament House Canberra ACT 2600

Phone: +61 2 6277 3083 Fax: +61 2 6277 5829 ndis.sen@aph.gov.au

Hearing date: 17th April 2018, Perth, WA.

I welcome this opportunity to make a submission to the Joint Standing Committee on the National Disability Insurance Scheme.

I note that a key focus of this hearing is on assisting the Committee to understand the process that people with disability go through to become Scheme participants, and how they have received and used their packages of supports.

I note also that the committee welcomes submissions and information from participants, their carers and family members, as well as service providers.

In this submission I will draw the Committee’s attention to the way in which the NDIA’s attempt to consult with the LGBTIQ+ communities to develop a strategy to ensure that the specific needs of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, sex, sexuality and gender diverse people are adequately understood and provided for within the Scheme and the ‘participant pathway’ processes has failed to produce any meaningful outcomes thus far.

In this consultation process, the NDIA and contractors have also demonstrated a disturbing lack of cultural competency regarding safe and respectful awareness and inclusion of people with lived experience of disability intersecting with LGBTIQ+ experience. This is causing many members of the community serious concern and deep distress, as they attempt to engage with this process and increasingly lose confidence in it.

The immediate flow-on affect of this erosion in trust and lack of appropriate inclusion at the NDIA / community consultation level is that individuals’ sense of choice and control in entering the Scheme itself and accessing appropriate services and supports is being negatively impacted and their sense of safety and wellbeing is being compromised.

There are also broader concerns here in relation to: a. The implementation, performance and governance of the National Disability Insurance Scheme; and b. The administration and expenditure of the National Disability Insurance Scheme which the Committee is generally tasked with inquiring into.

To provide some background: the NDIA has brought a group of people with disabilities who identify as LGBTIQ together on a number of occasions, as well as service providers and organisational representatives in the sector on additional occasions, to consult with them in the development of an organisational strategy to be implemented within the NDIA.

I am writing as an individual who is a current participant in the Scheme and has been involved in the consultation process. Dates of the two meetings I have attended are the 24th May 2017 in

Submission Regarding LGBTI Disability Community Concerns

Sydney, and in Melbourne recently on 9th March - as well as participating in a survey first advertised online via the LGBTI Health Alliance on March 1st, 2017.

The process has been flawed from the beginning. There has been a lack of transparency and accountability. LGBTI Disability community members are feeling disempowered; there is a sense that we haven’t been seriously listened to or properly consulted with or represented. We have been given confusing information about the progress of the strategy development and we have been misinformed or not informed at all despite repeated requests about the status of the draft strategy document.

While I am making this submission as an individual due to time constraints, it is also important to stress that a lot of other people are not happy with the level of accountability on the NDIA’s part. Over the past few weeks since the Melbourne meeting I have had the opportunity to consult in person and in writing with at least ten other LGBTI/Disability advocates and their partners who also attended, as well as with support providers who were in the room. There is no consistency with the information that everyone has received, and it is actually making us very distressed and angry.

I have sent a number of emails to the NDIA regarding this issue and have cc’d a lot of my colleagues from the community in - who share some of the same frustrations as I do. We are angry because we have been treated really poorly - we feel we have not been listened to because we have not seen how our input has been included in the draft strategy. In written exchanges, the NDIA are not addressing any of our concerns and are not reporting properly. The lack of Disability awareness and cultural competency in the meeting processes is doubly disturbing as it suggests a likely lack of competency at the delivery interface - something which many of us have already experienced as participants.

We are asking to:

• See urgently a copy of the Draft LGBTIQ+ Strategy that has already been selectively circulated to some organisations, but has excluded individual advocates present at those meetings.
• Have a forum organised to resolve these issues. This should be Disability-led, resourced and attended by the NDIA, but independently conducted to enquire into what the process have been so far and into the way the NDIA has treated individual participants who have been active in the process.
• See senior people from NDIA present at the next forum and actively engaged with this process - including the CEO, Board members and Independent Advisory Council members

Further questions raised for the Committee’s consideration are:

• Why is the development of the LGBTIQ strategy taking so long? The impact on the community of this delay is there is deep concern that our voices are not genuinely being heard and reflected in the system.

• Why haven’t we seen the strategy yet? The impact of waiting to see the strategy as individuals while knowing that it has been circulated to select organisations is that we have no idea how we are being represented, and creates tensions within the community.

• Which other organisations and individuals have been consulted with? The impact of not knowing who else has been consulted with means we do not know who has seen the strategy, who is working on it, or who gets to have feedback on it. Who are the other people with disabilities who have been consulted with in a professional capacity, and have they been properly compensated for their time? I am deeply concerned with the lack of openness regarding individuals being invited to consultations. It feels like some of us are being handpicked by the organisation or having to insist on a place at the table; this feels unfair and exclusive of others.

• Why are you treating us as if we are stupid and not treating us in a professional way? The impact of this is we feel that our contributions are not being valued and our voices are not being

• Why is it so hard to not give us the answers we want? The impact of excessive delays in responses to straightforward reasonable questions is that we begin to doubt and distrust the process and those governing it, develop a lack of trust in the system, and that the people who are delivering it are being seen to be taking away choice and control rather than empowering people to gain this in their lives.

I am currently organising community dialogue around these issues. The lack of an existing formal Strategy for LGBTIQ+ people within the NDIS means we are not empowered by the process and our needs are not being met within the Scheme.