Independent Assessments

                                 Submission 85

I am an NDIS participant, and parent to two other NDIS participants. I am very concerned about what independent assessments will mean for each of us, and our family, as well as our community as a whole.

Independent assessments are proposed as a way to enable greater access and reduce costs.

However, making the mandatory means they’re not about helping participants at all. The cost of assessment can be a barrier to getting access to the NDIS, this is true. But this is not an argument to make all participants subject themselves to the exact same test.

What’s more, they are not fit for purpose. The NDIS was intended to be a way for disabled people to have greater say and control over the way we’re supported. Our goals were meant to be central to this. The proposed independent assessments bypass our own expertise with respect to our needs, as well as that of our existing caregivers. The new system would ignore our goals at the stage when funding was decided.

The one-size-fits-all approach to assessments is absurd. A standardised ‘functional assessment’ clearly cannot capture the diverse range of support needs that may exist within the disabled community. The leap from ‘function’ to ‘support needs’ in this context has not been adequately established.

In my family, our disability is not obvious. We would be forced to subject ourselves to invasive questioning to attempt to demonstrate needs which have already been demonstrated. In particular, i do not believe the independent assessments as proposed will capture the support needs of autistic individuals. Have survey questions been specifically tested for validity with an autistic participant? Our communication needs are often quite different, and we engage with such instruments differently to neurotypical individuals. I have seen nothing to suggest that this has been taken into account.

I can say, also, as a mother, that my children would not be comfortable submitting themselves for examination in this way (and frankly neither am i). What then? Would they be marked as non-compliant, supports withdrawn, as so often happens with income supports? To impose this change unilaterally, with no consultation, and minimal testing, is absolutely a contradiction of the stated purpose of the NDIS.

Are we to have no dignity? Can we expect no respect, even in the matter of our own disability?

What i expect to happen, if these proposed changes go ahead, is that myself and my children will likely lose funding, if not access to the NDIS entirely. We will have no avenue to appeal. And our lives will suffer as a result. Our family, as a whole, is quite dependent on the supports provided by the NDIS. This we can demonstrate through our own testimony, which should count in and of itself, and through the reports of our service providers.

It seems clear to me that the purpose of these changes is to make the system more adversarial, and thus harder for us to navigate. Ultimately, to make access more difficult. All of which will hurt people who are already marginalised and vulnerable, and who are anyway amongst the least able to fight against the changes.

For changes of this magnitude to be pushed through without due consultation and against the wishes of participants only adds to my fears.