JSC Parliamentary Inquiry Independent Assessments
A Assessors do not match PWD needs, capture complexity, improve the NDIS process or address NDIS issues and steal graduates from a very thin market
Summary
I need to trust the people I let in my home and I let talk to myself and my daughter: neither of us trust strangers easily and our home is our safe place. An independent assessor who has an instrument which may change our future is not a safe person to let inside our sanctuary of safeness. I wish to maintain choice and control over who we speak with and who we let into our home. I need my daughter and myself to be assessed by professionals who match our complexity: I have zero trust that an independent assessor will correctly interpret my daughter’s reaction to them, such as providing random answers or engaging in complex echolalia in preference to engaging in the assessment. I will never trust the process: this is a funds cutting exercise not something designed to help people with disability. There should be no politics in this process and yet it is highly political. The IA’s will steal graduates from the thin supply of therapists: We need graduates to become therapists not independent assessors because there’s such a short supply of them. There’s a better way! I want to see people not on the scheme who need the support get onto it but independent assessments as currently designed are not the way. Please use Medicare for people to get initial assessments to get onto the scheme. IA potentially invalidate important assessments The instruments have been bastardised but unfortunately contain questions directly lifted from a range of instruments that now won’t be able to be administered by the very therapists that will be involved in providing that much needed capacity building therapy for participants. And not providing results. Yep that does not help capacity building either or provide transparency in the scheme. It’s barely implement, so why fix what’s not broken? There are things that need fixing in the NDIS, but this is not the way to do them. Much could be fixed in the NDIS by staff choice, staff training, provider oversight, etc. Independent assessments will leave many existing problems unaddressed.
Thank you for holding this valuable inquiry.
A redacted:s37 - Law enforcement and public safety is the parent of a child with multiple complex needs. She receives therapy from a speech therapist, occupational therapist, art therapist, behavioural psychologist, physiotherapist and exercise physiologist. They are experts in their field, hand picked to match her. We are being told that their reports and those of her paediatrician and psychiatrist will be overridden by a flawed instrument from a generic assessor. They cannot possibly capture her complexity. I am also a future participant. I am someone who survives on a Carer’s pension. And I cannot afford to manage my disability or get the assessments needed for access. But I still would never choose to be assessed by a stranger I hadn’t chosen to match my particular impairments. Especially as I live with several. I need therapists that can both assess me and advise on how best I can be supported. The instruments as they stand could not capture that complexity.
Hope you find submission useful helping understand process.
The very concerned about political proposed especially given little consultation people disabilities tender organisations put before chance become involved lack respect people disabilities process huge profits provider organizations non transparent encompassing power participants just reconcilable scheme meant support seems designed give minimum possible funding while generating maximum profit administering independent assessments all whilst not actually
Independent Assessments
Submission 324
adressing issues which are actually important to participants in the scheme such as the oversight over providers who put participants at risk.
i need to trust the people I let in my home and i let talk to myself and my daughter
My main concerns as a nominee for my 11 year old daughter and for myself as a future participant is how IAs take away choice and control. I hand pick every one of my daughter’s therapists and matching is the key to her acceptance of them. Strangers will never get an honest assessment from her. Behaviours such as choosing random answers just because or because she is masking that she doesn’t understand the question and ignoring assessors to engage in a complex form of echolalia because it’s stressful and her preference are hardly likely to be correctly interpreted by someone who does not know her. It’s not right that her random answers etc then determine her funding, especially when we have great reports that will tell you what you need to know.
For myself, even though I have not had access to a wide range of medical and allied health professionals in the past thirty years of requiring support due to financial circumstances, I would still like to choose them myself. How could a stranger capture my complexity, if I could even have low enough anxiety to let them inside my house on the day?
our home is our safe place. An independent assessor who has an instrument which may change our future, potentially negatively, is not a safe person to let inside our sanctuary of safeness. i do not want strangers in my home to talk about incredibly personal things with that have such an impact on my daughter and me as her nominee. i similarly wouldn’t want this for myself, even though i can’t afford an assessment and ias are free. Trust is imperative, as is choice and control. IAS are not respectful of people with disability.
i need my daughter and myself to be assessed by professionals who match our complexity
i needed to have my daughter assessed by a psychiatrist to capture her complexity accurately.
i am concerned that my daughter or myself may be accessed by someone who does not have skills in assessing our disabilities.
i will never trust the process
a process where you don’t get the results and don’t get to appeal the funding given is not transparent and that makes this flawed process dangerous and potentially harmful.
in this family that would mean major anxiety and self harm. please just take the reports from the therapists that know her.
the whole process sets up an combative relationship between the participant and ndia. This is incredibly unhealthy and stressful. Where exactly does one go if this process results in cancelling access to NDIS funding?
this is essentially a funds cutting, funding minimisation exercise that is highly political. It is not about helping people with disability or improvising things for people with disability. it sets us up as the untrusted party having to continually reprove our eligibility for a scheme we were meant to have for life because we already were able to show we had a lifelong and permanent disability. nobody benefits from asking us to continually do this.
ias will steal graduates from the thin supply of therapists
we live in an outer suburban area of melbourne. We currently face waiting lists of 6 months to a year for most therapies. Therapists leave often as they dont enjoy the travel or leave for family or location reasons.
Independent Assessments Submission 324
Therapists are more useful to families out practicing their profession, rather than administering a flawed instrument that is not supported by their professional bodies and makes them operate outside their professional code of conduct.
They risk complaints to AHPRA or their professional bodies early in their career. And I for one would definitely be complaining if anyone other than a highly experienced psychologist or highly experienced OT administered my daughter’s IA.
Why should the government make the market even thinner by soaking up graduates into a flawed scheme when we desperately need them in the marketplace?
It is hard enough now to get a therapists; please don’t make it harder!
There’s a better way!
Please preserve choice and control and use Medicare to help those not already on the scheme get low cost or free assessments to potentially access to it.
This is already done for some impairments. It wouldn’t take much to extend this to anyone so that a GP who knows someone can say - hey, I really think we need to assess whether you meet the criteria to be supported by the NDIS, I can activate these Medicare codes for you. You can go to a therapist of this kind of your choice, or I can refer you to someone I know who does these assessments, etc.
This would make assessments accessible to everyone.
And for those already on the scheme, the scheme would continue to pay when assessments are needed.
AIs potentially invalidate important assessments
Parts of the IA assessments mirror parts of commonly used assessments. Because exactly the same wording is often used it means that the full actual and more valid assessment may be invalid. And because the results are not provided, a participant’s changes over time cannot be accurately tracked and measured. This could have consequences for outcomes of capacity building.
It is much better that valid assessment tools are used by the therapists who will then structure their therapies around those results. If they are to participate in building a participant’s capacity they need accurate assessments. IAs really get in the way rather than facilitate that process.
It’s barely implement; so why fix what’s not broken?
I live in one of the last areas to go onto the scheme. Most participants I know are just getting their second or third plan and understanding how to use the scheme. And suddenly there’s big changes afoot. For many who’ve done without adequate supports for years and feeling hopeful for the first time, this is a tremendous blow. And also an incredible undermining of their confidence in the scheme.
The NDIS does need some changes. But they are tweaks really. And they are really needed on the provider side, not the participant side. And they should not be done without consultations. Really there’s been very little. And what there has been has been misused and distorted every time a politician opens their mouth.
I’d like to see providers who are doing the wrong thing be more thoroughly audited as one example. It seems that the government is unnecessarily worrying about the size of funding packages, when in reality plans end early because of the planning timetable (so typically 10 months not 12) and the whole of funding is rarely utilised. We should be more concerned with providers who seek to take more from a participant’s plan than they should through shonky rostering and overcharging for routine admin.