Supplementary submission to the Joint Standing Committee on Independent Assessments

with regards to the problematic premise reflected by the introduction of compulsory independent assessments in the context of the implementation, performance and governance of the National Disability Insurance Scheme

With regards to the terms of reference:

a) the development, modelling, reasons and justifications for the introduction of independent assessments into the NDIS;

In that context I propose for your consideration,

The traditional narrative around disability has always been around burden and deficit, but the NDIS was built on the foundation of support. This singular shift is the basis of a different way of evaluating social investment and endeavour. While there are many interests at stake when we build a sector around social investment, the most primary locus of value is the target of our investment.

With the NDIS, the target of our investment is disabled people. We invest in disabled people so that those who are disabled by societies failure to accommodate are supported to nonetheless carve out space for diversity in a great many domains, the most important of which is in how disabled people develop our individualised supports.

The NDIS was rolled out in a way that purposely and predictably disrupted the disability sector to remove the power from organisations by instituting individualised funding, and while this was an important cornerstone to empower disabled people, the rollout was not necessarily well thought out. While building a scheme around individualised supports is unquestionably important, and a huge leap forward in how people with disabilities are able to influence and impact society, the foundation of the sector was pulled out such that providers suddenly had to invest in procurement of individualised funding rather than ensuring consistent, safe and high quality provision of support. This kind of adversarial conflict of interest could have foreseeably been buffered and ushered by maintaining some kind of baseline funding for supply of disability supports. It neednt be one or the other, but nonetheless an error was made that has yet to be rectified.

Nonetheless, despite this disruption being far from optimised and stabilised, and in the middle of a pandemic, when people were having to reinvent the wheel about how supports are delivered, the NDIA made the executive decision to declare itself mature as an entity without proper consultation with or endorsement by the disability community. Having done so, the NDIA began to issue directives that were unilateral, exclusive, adversarial, and abusive; one cannot argue in good faith that it is sound decision making to institute such significant shifts of power in the middle of a pandemic, push through drastic changes in legislation, and still maintain that they are acting in the service to and best interests of disabled people.

Therefore, this rupture in public trust must be repaired. The errors must be addressed and balance of power must be restored such that our investment is such that disabled people are the primary beneficiaries of the scheme.

The introduction or implementation of any compulsory measure in a scheme that was designed to be a radical shift to empower disabled people should obviously be avoided, particularly one as broad in scope and high in risk as mandating invasive and arbitrarily administered

Assessments

by design, independent in this context can be defined as arbitrarily administered because, by design, the notion of independence is constructed in a way that seeks to remove any influence on the assessment by the disabled person or their supports – which, again, are the primary locus of value in implementing an individualised plan). Furthermore, this concept of independent in the context of the disability community is coded language that institutes a lack of respect for disabled people and our supports: making that assessment compulsory and implemented outside the choice and control of the participant sends the message to the community that disabled people are not the primary source of information about our needs, our experiences, and how we value our engagements. That message is dangerous and will undermine the sustainability of the scheme.

The proposed changes are a violation to the integrity of the scheme and are a symptom of problematic culture that separates the decision making about how we allocate and distribute resources to the members of the disability community who must be recognised as the best cost avoiders. As such, this is broken design being fixed by even more broken design. The problem of inequity in individualised plans is not resolved by further removing and abstracting decisions about disabled people’s lives, effectively handing over and re-consolidating the power back to organisations - it is resolved by restoring the primacy of decision making with respect to disabled people, and recognising that disabled people are in the best position to inform and legitimise any decisions about our plans, and our lives, and our scheme.

Thank you, Jennifer Knight March 29, 2021