Submission

I am a family member and plan nominee who has known and worked with an NDIS participant with complex support needs for over 30 years. I have an honours degree and a postgraduate qualification in information management. I am happy to have this submission published online.

My son commenced his fourth plan in February 2021, and had three years on a paltry amount of individualised funding before the NDIS came along. Since my son has had nearly four years in the NDIS, I have become aware of a few things surrounding the assessment process.

• there are participants who could benefit from introductory free assessments in order to eventually access better planning processes.

I have seen people in the community who do not have enough support: often they are elderly and have intellectual disabilities, and probably no longer have family or friends who can advocate for them. I have heard from care agency staff that managing the funding for some clients is chaotic, and ensuring their NDIS supports are managed well is a real problem. There is definitely room in the system for a different, additional assessment process to support anyone who is currently slipping through the cracks.

• there are participants in the NDIS who would benefit from funding for increased advocacy support as well as free independent assessment.

• Without increased advocacy support , vulnerable and isolated participants are probably being slowly deprived of the capacity building support that has been an outstanding feature of the NDIS from the beginning.

• One aim of increased advocacy support (in addition to support coordination, which is actually a different kind of NDIS support) would be to expand isolated participants’ support networks and therapeutic networks, so that they are eventually able to commission their own assessments from experienced, well qualified allied health therapists and doctors who get to know them well.

  3. Eventually they should be able to dispense with the free independent assessment and enjoy well tailored, individualised plans.

• One would hope such plans would be similar in quality to those that more affluent, better connected participants have been able to obtain because of their well-developed support networks. In this sense the free independent assessment acts as a capacity building support, to be dispensed with eventually once therapists who know the participant well have been engaged and retained for a significant period.

• I recommend that all participants continue to be funded to commission their own reports if they are able, to be submitted before the draft planning process takes place. I would like to see a future where everyone can commission reports, not just those who are information-rich or superior networkers.

Planning Meeting Or Implementation Meeting?

Finally, I have read that the new planning meetings, taking place after an independent assessment and the presentation of a draft plan, will pretty much no longer be meetings where participants, their reportees and their advocates have input into the plans. They will rather be opportunities to discuss how the plan and budget that has already been created by the planner, with the independent assessment to hand, and read by the participant/advocate, will be implemented. This is a significant departure from previous plan meeting process.

In February, Sara Gingold of Disability Services Consulting discussed this with reference to the first NDIS discussion paper:

The paper proposes the following process: people will receive a draft plan before their meetings. Drafts can only be altered for supports like SDA, home modifications or assistive technology or if the participant has complex support needs.

Consequently, under the proposed model, the planning meeting itself would usually have no bearing on the overall plan budget. Instead, meetings would more closely resemble what we now consider plan implementation meetings, an opportunity for participants to discuss how they can spend their funds and what mainstream supports they can access.

Plan implementation discussions can be incredibly useful, particularly for participants new to the Scheme. But is this what participants primarily want out of planning meetings?

If you don’t ask, you won’t know, but here’s an educated guess: people value planning meetings as an opportunity to argue their case, explain their circumstances and connect on a human level with the person who is about to make decisions which will seriously impact their life.

Very often, battles do not arise because everybody enters the meeting in a spirit of collaboration. Just in case something does go wrong, however, we have to give people the

• opportunity to stand up for what they are entitled to.
• And let’s be real; we don’t actually need
• to choose between a plan implementation meeting and a funding negotiation.
• As the famous question goes: why not both?i

I realise that participants with complex support needs are in a position to have an advocate negotiate with the planner to change the draft, and this is an important and highly necessary provision. It’s probably the provision that applies to my son, and any planner is going to have the devil of a time convincing me otherwise! However I remain deeply concerned for other participants who all deserve to have discussions resembling what Ms. Gingold is asking for. This is one of the reasons I have written this submission.

It appears that the Agency’s intention is to allow the independent assessing process to dominate the creation of the plan, AND the plan’s budget.

This could easily lead to the creation of unsatisfactory and poorly negotiated plans that do not include things that have been missed by the independent assessor. One assessor cannot possibly be expected to cover everything that the participant will need over the coming year, as this person is not trained to assess in every area of the participant’s disability that is relevant. It will almost certainly save money, but it will not save much if everyone appeals against poorly informed and designed plans that they have not been able to redeem during the planning process.

To conclude, I am not against the provision of free independent assessments for participants who are currently missing out on assessments due to hardships or isolation, but I want to see these participants given advocacy supports to ensure they develop therapy networks for future assessments.

Concerns Regarding Draft Plans and Independent Assessment Reforms

I am deeply concerned about the proposal for so-called “draft” plans being provided before plan (implementation) meetings.

I agree that the existing planning process has its shortcomings, but I don’t believe that the proposed independent assessment reforms will make for improvement unless the current planning process is enhanced by it, rather than sidelined.

Thank you for the opportunity to comment on these issues. I hope you have time to read all of Sara Gingold’s excellent post for DSC on the first NDIA planning discussion paper. All her posts for DSC on these matters are very helpful. I wish the committee all the best for the inquiry. i Gingold, Sara. ‘5 questions we wished they asked: The NDIA Planning Discussion Paper.’ Disability Services Consulting blog, 8 February 2021. Available at: https://teamdsc.com.au/resources/5-questions-we-wish-they-asked-the-ndia-planning-discussion-paper . Accessed March 30, 2020.