- Communication with participants, and expectations of their responsibilities verses the responsibilities, ethics and efficiency of the NDIS organisation.
Yesterday I received a letter (at the end of the day) from the NDIS compliance team saying please contact us, we have tried to contact you. Being someone whose anxiety is triggered by the smallest thing, my immediate thoughts were ‘compliance’? what have I done wrong? I always try and do the right thing. I barely slept a wink all night. It also said that they wanted to talk to me about my responsibilities as a participant with an NDIS plan. What had I done wrong? What had I done wrong? Do I need to pay back money? Surely my plan manager has that all under control - I always check with them first. That is what the NDIS pays them for - to pay bills and check if they are fine to pay so I don’t have to stress too much. I have no job any more, no income, other than my husbands meagre super pension. What have I done wrong? How can I afford to pay money back?
I looked up the NDIS website and all the compliance related info was related to providers not participants. The letter gave me a number to call by a certain date. It did not have times they were open for calls. The NDIS website said open between 8am and 8pm, so I skipped my morning physio session so I could be here at 8am ready to call. I was so stressed. I rang the number the letter gave me. Got an answering machine saying open between 9am and 5pm. My heart went through the roof again. Wait another hour, feeling more and more stressed. I finally got through. I told them they mustn’t have looked at their info because my profile says preferred method of contact is email (because we have no mobile reception at my house) and I definitely didn’t get an email. Checked the portal, some twit there had written my email address with heaps of capital letters in totally weird places so they wouldn’t have gotten through anyway. Lady said they only tried my mobile and there was no message bank with my name so they couldn’t leave a message. If they had tried the home phone not only would someone have been home but home message bank clearly has my name on it and they could have left a message.
She then said they were just conducting an ‘education’ program for participants who are self managed, calling participants to educate them about their responsibilities to use non NDIS registered providers responsibly and within the guidelines. But I am plan managed not self managed! She needed to look up her notes and then added ‘oh probably because you can use non NDIS registered providers’. She then gave me a massive spiel about the difference between everyday items and disability specific items. I also told her that I live in a town of 900 people, most of whom live on farms. There are no local cleaners, or support workers and hardly any who are prepared to come out here from the local regional town. It may be only 17 km’s away but those workers and companies don’t want to travel out here, so charge top dollar for services, plus travel km or time and registered with the NDIS or not they know how to find the NDIS rates so charge the top prices. I have no choice but to use whoever will come out here. I am waiting on a review for a new plan that has slashed my core funding by 70% despite using 90% of my last plan. I can’t help wonder if I was targeted. I feel like a criminal even though I try to do everything that is right. Why didn’t the letter just say, we tried to contact you as part of our educating and updating participants program?? I listened to her spiel, told her I felt confident that I was always asking for disability specific stuff and always checked with the plan manager to see if I could claim
- something before paying for it and that this call and letter was distressing, poorly worded and
totally unnecessary and I queried their motives in contacting me.
The NDIS is paying Plan Management companies to look after this for us, to reduce our stress and help give our funds organised and in line with our plans. Surely they should be the ones being targeted for ‘re-education’ if there was a problem?
By the end of the call my struggle to keep it together and appear calm and not rude was totally gone. I was in absolute tears. PS I emailed my LAC last night to ask for help as to what this was all about, of course I still haven’t heard back. She never ever returns an email.
Apparently it’s better to put call centre staff to work ringing people to tell them how to do better, than to have the organisation do better themselves by perhaps putting some of these staff into the review section so that we aren’t all waiting months and months and months for our shitty plans to be reviewed??
Education of participants is not education when it comes from a compliance department. It’s a threat.