Dear members of the Joint Standing Committee,

RE: Independent Assessments under the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS)

My name is Despina Filippaki and I am a 31yr old qualified social worker. I am disabled as a result of occupational-male violence while working in the community services sector. I am a member of various Injured Workers’ collectives and disability advocacy groups across Victoria and in the past I have served on the boards of various community and professional organizations.

I have been on Workcover for a number of years and I have lived experience of Independent Medical Exams’ impact on the lives of disabled injured workers in Australia. Disabled workers across Australia who have survived Workcover’s Independent Medical Exams can attest to the fact that the IMEs increase acute hospital admissions and suicidality. Disabled workers are dehumanized and re-traumatized through IMEs that do not reflect their capability position and pain levels, rather they are used to decrease their supports and treatment and delegitimize their pain.

I am in the process of applying for NDIS and I strongly oppose the introduction of Independent Assessments as they are not about self-direction, choice and control. Because of my professional and personal experience, I can easily draw parallels between these NDIA’s Independent Assessments and Workcover’s Independent Medical Exams.

I am terrified and overwhelmed to be part of yet another system where a medical or paramedical practitioner, a person in a position of authority, who sees me for a once-off short session, will make a decision on how disabled I am, what my needs are and what services and supports I need and deserve.

In a recent IME appointment that I had to endure for Workcover purposes I was told I am manifesting my pain, I do not have a physical impairment and I do not need mobility supports despite the fact that I had submitted numerous reports from my medical practitioners with information about my multiple injuries, my capability position and how chronic pain affects me. This decision made by a stranger whom I cannot oppose or fire and whose opinions affect my access to compensation, treatment and services has caused irreversible harm.

Snapshot approaches such as the proposed Independent Assessments are doomed to fail participants. They are not trauma-informed, holistic or unbiased.

I am concerned about the negative outcomes IAs will have on current and future participants’ lives and fear that they will be used to limit peoples’ access to the NDIS and further delegitimize disabled peoples’ lived experience.

International literature highlights that minoritized people often struggle to access services, their pain is psychiatrized and are often undermedicated and underdiagnosed. Sexism, racism, queerphobia and ableism within the medical system are public health issues, they have a psychological and physiological impact.

LGBTQI and incarcerated people, women, CALD and First Nations people are often seen as time consuming, hypochondriacs and malingerers due to the psychiatrisation of our pain. Our pain is undertreated and overlooked. Our struggle is a struggle for legitimacy.

The NDIA has not taken into consideration and cannot address the medical bias of the Independent Assessors to ensure disabled women, disabled queers, disabled indigenous and CALD community members do not continue to be disproportionately affected.

You cannot “Independently Assess” your way into “a simpler, faster, fairer and more flexible NDIS”. To suggest that our medical teams are biased towards us is not supported by the international literature; this allegation is used to undermine the strengths-based work our medical and paramedical teams do across Australia and their clinical experience.

For decades disabled Australians have advocated for each successive Australian government to invest in infrastructures and economies of care, sadly the introduction of Independent Assessors is a snapshot approach that has nothing to do with community care.

Allocating funding towards our existing medical teams and allowing them to provide reports for the NDIS is a holistic, unbiased and trauma-informed option. It is the only option that does not create layers of veiled administrative violence, violence rooted in ableism and professional hegemony that is enacted by professionals that are not part of our lives.

Disabled Australians cannot realize their goals within landscapes of ableist violence and eptic injustice.

Our medical and allied health teams know us better.

Our strengths, our limitations, our capabilities, our struggles, our goals matter to them.

They want to see us thrive, one NDIS application/report at a time.

Regards,

Despina Filippaki