Dear NNDIS Independent Assessment Committee Members,

Thank you for giving us an opportunity to make a submission on the proposed NDIS independent assessments.

I have a lived experience of disability and I worked as a Support Coordinator to ensure people from culturally and linguistically diverse (CaLD) backgrounds with disability to get the reasonable and necessary supports in their homes, in the community and the therapies they needed as stated in their NDIS plans. Most of the times, they were not adequately funded to get the supports they needed as the people doing their plans did not really understand their needs.

We, the people with disability fought for a National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) that would support each individual’s specific needs to close the disability gap. However unfortunately, I strongly feel that independent assessments conducted by professionals who may have knowledge of some disabilities but not others, will not be able to appropriately assess our needs. Independent assessments will take us back to the earlier days prior to the NDIS where there were some people that were supported and some others with sensory and physical disability were not. Everyone will be put in one basket and independent assessments will have tick boxes dictating what a person who is blind would need, a wheelchair user would need, etc.

Both my sister and I are totally blind but as some of our needs are similar, we do have different needs, for example, she may not need as much funding support for technical help as I might or she may need more mobility and orientation training that I might need.

Also, the proposal to take reasonable and necessary out of the NDIS Act 2013 will be disastrous for some of us when funding from our reasonable and necessary supports are reduced or cut off where we will no longer be able to access the necessary and reasonable supports and services to live well and independently in our homes and participate meaningfully in the community. This proposal needs to be amended.

Australia has the largest community of people from diverse cultural, ethnic, linguistic and religious backgrounds. According to 2016 Census, 33% of Australians are born in a country other than Australia; that is about one in three people; and a further 16% have either one or both parents born overseas. Australian people speak more than 300 languages excluding the languages of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. CaLD people are not a homogenous people. There is diversity within diversity, http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/lookup/Media%20Release3.

When people migrate to Australia

When people migrate to Australia, they usually come with their beliefs, values, pre and post migration stress and trauma. People with disability from diverse Cultural, ethnic, religious and linguistic backgrounds are disadvantaged on many levels including

• Experiences of cultural and religious barriers they themselves and

their community may put on them;

• Lack of English language proficiency and not knowing what services

are available for them and how to access them;

• Gender imbalances as in some cultures, females are not as equal as

their male counterparts.

• Many people who are born in Australia to migrant parents may still

tend to speak their mother tongue / first language at home and are influenced by their ethnicity, old cultural practises and religious beliefs.

The NDIS only provides funding for therapies for children with disability from the ages of zero to 18 years and in most cases, does not provide social, community and civic participation supports funding. Some parents who are from CaLD backgrounds, are isolated from their own ethnic community for having a child with disability in the family, usually the mother takes on the full-time carer role and does not get an opportunity to access English language classes and does not have the benefit of the support of extended family as they may not be residing in Australia, an as a result, both the child with disability and their families become further isolated as they may not know what activities to participate in the community. NDIS provides the minimal funding for therapies for children and most service providers refuse to provide therapy services to them as they see it as no value for money and children miss out on the vital therapy services and their own development. Unfortunately, NDIS Independent assessments will only make life more difficult by cutting more funding from these children’s supports and services by clustering them all in one box.

In some cultures, there is no word for disability. The person with disability is referred to as a sick person or a patient who needs help for the rest of their lives. Disability is perceived negatively as a punishment from God for the person’s or their family members’ sins in their previous lives and the person is devalued both by their own families and the wider community. In some other cultures, person’s disability is perceived as a gift from God to test their family carers’ resilience. It is believed that the family members will be rewarded or punished by god in their next lives depending on their good or bad treatment of the person with disability. Both of these attitudes have a strong tendency to isolate the person with disability from their own families, communities and disempower them, thus reducing their confidence to develop their own living skills, independence, to access services and participate meaningfully in the community. However, when they are encouraged to access

the services they need like NDS, etc., due to their limited English language proficiency, they find filing forms, going through the red tape, the bureaucracy, etc. too difficult and challenging and tend to get frustrated and give up.

Where people have an intellectual or sensory or neurological or psychosocial disability, they will be worse off with tick box independent assessments, especially if English is there second language. NDs needs to be progressed further with improvements; not digress with funding cuts as a result of independent assessments. We do not want to go back to bad old days where people who were blind did not get much support at all. Please kill, disregard, get rid of independent assessments.

Kind regards

Nihal Iscel.

–

Nihal Iscel