Dear Members of the Joint Standing Committee on the National Disability Insurance Scheme,

Thank you for the opportunity to submit my experiences in working as an occupational therapist within the National Disability Insurance Scheme. I have been practicing as an occupational therapist for 7 years at a NSW Health hospital. I have been involved in the National Disability Insurance Scheme since it was rolled out in our area in 2017.

In relation to general feedback regarding the scheme,

• For clients under 65 who are not approved for NDIS, they now have no access to subsidised modifications, therapy, services or transport. This means that clients under 65 who require modifications to enable them to access their homes or their bathrooms, are now required to pay full price.
• False illusions of ‘choice and control’.
• Most therapists do not understand the scheme, let alone clients/families who are stressed during a hospital admission and trying to make sense of it all. This leads to extensive burden on therapists trying to explain options and processes to clients and families most of which have changed by the time the participant gets to the next step in their NDIS journey.
• Setting up a scheme with the conscious choice of not employing planners etc with disability experience (I have been told as a way of preventing stigma etc against people with disabilities) has been a dreadful mistake. I find myself, and my clients, wasting valuable time trying to explain their conditions and the impact of their conditions on daily life to LACs, Planners and Support Coordinators and most of the time still not receiving approvals for essential aids.
• One of my clients had a plan developed in hospital. There was no inclusion for personal care assistance or support coordination as the participant was requiring major home modifications and the LAC actually told the client and

• family that these would not be completed within the year, hence the LAC stated she would include it in the following plan year. At the next years plan review, the LAC then asked why the community access/social supports funding hadn’t been used- the client is doubly incontinent and needs care support to manage toileting, hence can’t leave the hospital and access the community without this support which is why no community access/social support funding was used.
• No prioritisation of requests for inpatients- leading to lengthy stays in hospital; draining of hospital resources and preventing beds being available for new patients
• We have been told that plan development and plan review will be carried out by a planner (not an LAC) for our hospital clients. After numerous plans developed or reviewed in our hospital, we are still yet to have one completed by a planner.