Independent Assessments

                                 Submission 375

I am appealing for you to stop the implementation of independent assessments. I speak on behalf of my son who can not.

My son has extremely complex multiple disabilities . He requires 24/7 care. Even the complex planning team have struggled to understand him in multiple plan reviews and have made mistakes in making him an adequate plan with support for his needs.

I have stage 4 breast cancer and have developed PTSD with the trauma of caring for him before the NDIS came in. I have suffered much anxiety and stress trying to get him adequate supports. I am worried about him continuing to have access to the care he needs in the future and when I’m not around.

I can see that the Independent assessments making it impossible to properly assess his and others needs. People ticking boxes on forms without knowing or talking with people will make mistakes

I work in the NDIS space as a provider. I was proud to do work in this sector and have wonderful hopes and seeing huge improvement to the lives of people with disabilities. I cannot work in this sector if I cannot have belief in it. Since the scheme rolled out in our area I can see the real effect it has had with people building their capacity and having improved quality of life.

I am very fearful that these changes to the NDIS, namely the implementation of Independent assessments will undermine the whole concept of the NDIS and that aim of the scheme to provide access to an ordinary life are being slowly eroded away by cutbacks.

I also feel that the participants will now be made to feel like lazy, depending, undeserving welfare grabbers, questioned about their every move. They will be traumatised by the process of independent assessors. Those who have no voice or family will be worse off still. This is disgraceful. This is not the action of a country Australia I am proud to be a citizen of. The scheme is becoming more about business making money than the participants and people with disabilities go back to being an inconvenience and second class citizens.

The measure of our country and its international standing is in the way we treat our most vulnerable and hope is in the higher standing of the NDIS.

Many of the leading countries of the world have successful disability insurance schemes and I thought our country was becoming one of the higher developed nations.

People with disability just want to have an ordinary life. The vision of the scheme had been shown to work and save the government money in the long run do why ruin it now? I would be ashamed to see these changes come in without even consulting the people it is meant to support.

I am very concerned about the way the government has been trying to get these changes made and without consultation or transparency to the disability community The manner in which the tenders have been done and the connections of the business people who have been appointed to run the assessments does not seem to be ethical. Yours sincerely Concerned parent.