As a woman with disability, I emphasise that the proposed changes are anticipated by the disabled community to cause harm, as they exclude many vital supports essential for quality of life.

The focus remains on maintaining the barest possible standards of living.

e.g. “is necessary to support the person to live” “prevent isolation or segregation“

This legislation excludes critical supports in an effort to save money. It doesn’t reference dignity, and it doesn’t reference quality of life.

Assistive technology is also important for many things, not just mobility.

Where it says: “will minimise the prospects of the person acquiring a further impairment or prevent the person from acquiring a further impairment; or“

Again, the focus here is on saving money, not quality of life.

As a person with disability, I strongly speak out against these changes.

These current proposed changes to the NDIA are not co-designed with people with disability.

Co-design would look like a new, 6-12 month national submission opportunity on the proposed changes for all people with disability to recommend alternative better strategies to save the NDIS money. Co-design would be transparent. Co-design would not target certain groups or imply their support needs are less valid.

For example, the NDIA could consider more helpful cost saving measures such as:

• Expanding on call support to be an option for people in the community, not just people in Specialist Disability Accommodation and Supported Independent Living

• Asking each group of people with disability: What they believe their typical support package/s should look like in order to maximise capacity (e.g. what categories tend to be the most helpful)

• Creating two different streams in each plan:

• 1. A quality of life stream where supports are ongoing for maintenance and reoccur each year at the same amount, for areas of the individual’s capacity that have been stabilised
• 2. A capacity building stream where supports are designed to help reach stabilisation and are reassessed as needed

This would reduce plan report and reassessment costs. It would also be a positive change away from the current model which too often solely focuses on trying to capacity build people with permanent disabilities out of having support needs, which is concerning given this often may not be possible.

Alternative Strategies the NDIS Could Use to Save Money Without Harming Participants

1. The NDIS could create an equipment pool where assistive technology that you stop needing (e.g., due to deterioration in progressive condition) is placed back in the pool for others who need it, to reduce the amount of new assistive technology purchases that are needing to be made.

2. Many disabled people do not want to be forced to rely on others and have people in their home as often as they do, but are left with little choice because the NDIS often knocks back other options that are more preferable (and more cost effective!).

For example:

• The NDIA could offer participants the option of meal preparation and delivery funding instead of support work funding for meal preparation. This would be far cheaper than funding support workers to do this and would also be the preference of many disabled people, particularly those who are unlikely to gain the capacity to meal prep for themselves in the near future. This should not apply to those with specialist dietary needs who may need more individualised options.

• The NDIA could fund assistive technology as often as possible (e.g., robot vacuums, thermomixes for people with MS, wheelchairs that have more capabilities in terms of terrain, seat lift etc.) to help reduce support work needed overall, particularly for those who are unlikely to gain the capacity to do the task for themselves in the near future.

• The NDIA could make all cupboards in new SDA builds required to be accessible so that when the government is paying for accessible accommodation, it is genuinely accessible and not perpetuating needless support tasks e.g., getting things down from cupboards when people could be given the ability to access them themselves.

• The NDIS could fund home modifications wherever possible so that participants could be as independent as possible.

Other great strategies could be:

3. The NDIS could create support hubs in each local area where support provider is determined by majority vote of the disabled people in the area. They could then expand on call support funding to be for people who live in the community, not just those living in SIL or SDA, decreasing the need for in-home supports.

4. The government could increase funding to organisations like SANE, Beyond Blue and Kids Helpline which often phone counselling so that the wait times are feasible. They could organise mandatory minimum qualifications (psychology or counselling degree) for each staff member at lifeline so that the system is more robust and able to better meet psychosocial needs.

5. The NDIS could increase number of hours allocated for support coordination, psychosocial recovery coaching and specialist support coordination and plan managers, to decrease caseload size and quality of service, and increase these valuable organisations’ ability to coordinate effectively and maximise value for money in each plan. This would decrease wasted expenditure caused by situations where participants don’t have the resources and knowledge to get the most out of their plan. Plan Managers could have a valuable role in preventing fraud if they had more hours available to do so. This would decrease processing times, addressing present issues with PACE and providers taking longer to get paid which is currently placing the sector at risk of collapse. It would also massively increase oversight.

• 6. Either removing the requirement for modifications to be fitted on new cars, or covering the difference between a new car and a second hand car so that disabled people who can drive but need modifications aren’t forced to rely on support workers or costly specialist transport because they can’t afford a new car so they aren’t eligible for modifications.
• 7. The NDIA could target one of the most common kinds of fraud in the NDIA - providers charging 30 minutes travel to and from a participant, even if the travel is far shorter than this.
• 8. The NDIS could believe participants on what they need, so that thousands of dollars of reports aren’t needed regularly. This would save a false economy where participants are spending the majority of their therapies funding on obtaining documentation to prove the need for therapies and assistive technology. Reports should only be required where there is a significant risk or change of circumstances. This is one of the biggest cost saving measures the NDIA could implement. Every year, the majority of my therapies budgets go towards arguing back and forth with the NDIA about whether therapies are needed. NDIS participants and tax payers deserve better.
• 9. The NDIA could staff the agency with a majority of disabled people - this would fuel the economy, improve the scheme and give many people jobs who weren’t able to work previously the opportunity.
• 10. The NDIA could ask each group of people with disability to write recommendations on what the typical support package should look like for that group in order to maximise value for money