Submissions outlining details of individual cases or complaints may assist the committee

in identifying broader systemic issues for investigation.

PO Box 6100 Parliament House Canberra ACT 2600

Dear Committee Members, 1. Problem resolution. I am writing to you regarding the issues within the NDIA that prevent problem resolution and expose the NDIA to criticism and participants to avoidable misadventure. a. Health literacy. The NDIA has an issue with a lack of health literate staff. This means that it can be difficult to impossible to translate the critical meaning of information to staff who, with the best will in the world, do not appreciate the significance of what they are being told. i. There have been notable incidents in the press where it is obvious that a lack of health literacy has contributed to the disastrous outcome for the Participant. b. Refusing to respond to issues. The NDIA sends automatic replies saying they will respond – they simply do not. I was looking over notes from 2018 and I documented the same issue then and years previously. It has been this way since the roll out. c. Refusing to acknowledge mistakes. The NDIA refuses to acknowledge when they make mistakes thus making it virtually impossible to get a resolution. The NDIA seems to work o n the assumption that if they ignore a problem for long enough it will simply go away and then they seem surprised and annoyed when the problem has not gone away and has only escalated. d. Listening skills. The NDIA including senior members who advise the Minister do not listen. They assume knowledge of issues which they do not have then provide ill informed answers not based in fact. e. Taking a position and refusing to move. The NDIA has a culture where no matter what the evidence they will not budge from their position. The NDIA will write to you on NDIA letter head, with a breathtaking arrogance and ignorance justifying the unjustifiable. This includes making inappropriate health decisions to the current situation where the NDIA removed a Participants Choice and Control, provided an inaccessible, inappropriate plan and refused to do anything about it until significant collateral damage had occurred.

Refusing to pay bills

i. Refusing to pay their bills. The NDIA decided it would not allow accessible Support Coordination funding on a Plan. The NDIA demanded work be done without any funding to pay for this. i. The Pay -go-round – refusing to pay their bills for over a year. The NDIA said they would pay, then they said they would not pay, then they said they would pay for part of the work, then they said they would pay for all of the work and then they said they would not pay at all and to stop ringing and bothering them – that is usually the response of people who do not want to pay their bills. The NDIA followed this up by telling the Shadow Minister NDIA Bill Shorten, Senator McAlister, Minister Fletcher and the Prime Minister in a nutshell – nothing to see here, we’re not paying and its over……… until I said I was taking it up with the ABC. Then miraculously after 13 months the NDIA decided it would pay for two thirds of the work done. This took from April 2020 to May 2021. iii. Lack of professionalism. The NDIA had the documentation, they had their responses, they had me telling them they had not paid and said they would – they simply refused to listen. This is unprofessional.

• The NDIA staff appear to run their own personal agenda and they do not like to be proven wrong. They lack the emotional maturity to understand mistakes are a given, learn from them and move on. The NDIA invests extraordinary amounts of effort to avoid finding solutions to mistakes of their own making. f. Lack of accountability or responsibility. The NDIA lacks the integrity to address its mistakes and refuses to address the damage it causes. The NDIA’s culture is one accountability and responsibility are not to be seen. No one steps up to fix the issues because that would require admitting mistakes were made.g. Inbuilt barriers to access and to appropriate Plan funding. The NDIA has always had informal barriers to accessing the NDIS. This is particularly pertinent for people with a mental illness. i. Barriers to applying for the NDIS. Quite frankly it is difficult for me as a Health Professional experienced in the unique ways of the NDIA to negotiate the NDIA chicane let alone for a person who is chronically psychotic, paranoid, has significant command hallucinations with executive deficits or who has no insight into the fact they have a mental illness. The lack of insight is a function of the illness not a choice. People in this situation are in no position to advocate for their entitlements thus ensuring they will fall through the cracks. ii. Barriers at Planning. The NDIA then puts up barriers at the point of Planning. In spite promises to provide Planners who are literate in mental health, the NDIA continues to provide well meaning, nice Planners who have no appreciation of the issues and no understanding

of the collateral damage they cause – in this case putting a child in harm’s way.

2.  Included History. I have included the history of a participant outlining what the
 NDIA has put the Participant, her family and myself through over the past 13 months
   because they simply would not listen and are vested in defending the indefensible.
  The NDIA seem to have forgotten that they are there to help support people with a
    disability.

3.  Systemic issues. The issues I have outlined are not confined to this participant or this
   time. It was the same when the NDIA decided that a Participant would be denied
   access to their NDIS funding for Meals on Wheels – it took six months to fix because
   the NDIA would not listen. If the Meals on Wheels had not been paid for externally
   the Participant would have starved………………………………………..

4.  Quality improvement. The Quality improvement team requires support in addressing
   the attitudes that have developed within the NDIA which do not support the intended
   purpose of the NDIS. The NDIA also needs to address the culture of not listening and
   ignoring problems and having the integrity and professionalism to address problems
  when they are raised.

  Kind regards,

11 May 2021

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