DISABILITY
ACCOMMODATION ALLIANCE ACN | 629 769 615
16 May 2024
Committee Secretary Senate Standing Committees on Community Affairs PO Box 6100 Parliament House Canberra ACT 2600
Email: community.affairs.sen@aph.gov.au
to whom it may concern,
Re: Consultation on National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Getting the NDIS Back on Track No. 1) Bill 2024
The Specialist Disability Accommodation (SDA) Alliance would like to thank the Senate Standing Committees on Community Affairs (the Committee) for the opportunity to share our views relating to the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Getting the NDIS Back on Track No. 1) Bill 2024 (the Bill).
The SDA Alliance represents more than 70 SDA market players across the country (including SDA providers, institutional investors, developers, builders and allied health professionals). As the peak body representing the good practice New Build SDA sector, we provide a unified voice to better support the development of a diverse and sustainable SDA market.
The SDA Alliance is driven by three principles: active collaboration, maximising choice and control, and innovation and excellence. By engaging with governments and other key stakeholders, we seek to improve standards and regulations and promote the provision of excellence in SDA. Ensuring people with disabilities can exercise choice and control in relation to their housing and supports lies at the heart of our work.
The SDA Alliance serves on a number of government working groups including: the National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIA) SDA Reference Group; the NDIA Reform for Outcomes - Home and Living Codesign Working Group; the Department of Social Services Young People in Residential Aged Care Stakeholder Reference Group; and the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission Provider Advisory Group.
Below we outline our response to the Bill especially as it relates to people with profound or severe disability in need of specialist accommodation.
Disability Accommodation Alliance www.sdaalliance.org.au ACN | 629 769 615
Stated supports: The SDA Alliance welcomes an approach which offers National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) participants more flexible budgets inclusive of flexible funding and/or stated supports. Flexible funding will offer participants more choice and control to determine and pay for the supports they require. Regarding stated supports, the Explanatory Memorandum to the Bill states:
Stated supports are provided under a reasonable and necessary budget for specific high-cost
items. Category A NDIS rules will prescribe supports that are stated support for participants
or classes of participants. For example, high-cost assistive technology, home modifications
and supported independent living may all be stated supports1.
The SDA Alliance recommends that SDA is included as a stated support to ensure the housing needs of NDIS participants are met. Including SDA as a stated support is an important aspect of ensuring the continuity of care for people with extreme functional impairment or very high support needs.
Innovative support models such as Onsite Shared Support (OSS) should also be considered a stated support for individuals who make the choice to live in an SDA cluster of homes. OSS is delivered to a group of people living independently in SDA in the community. Individual dwellings are located in close proximity to each other (e.g., in an apartment ‘cluster’) with 24/7 OSS costs shared among the tenants; services are delivered from a separate on-site overnight assistance (OOA) location. OSS delivers significant advantages for tenants and the SDA market including:
- Fosters choice and control: Each person who makes the choice to live in an SDA cluster of homes where OSS is offered has a choice over when and how they are supported. Tenants are jointly able to choose the company providing the OSS and select the support workers hired.
- Enables people to live safely alone: This offers increased privacy for tenants at times when they do not need 1:1 support through access to back-up for unplanned support needs or emergencies.
- Innovative way of reducing costs: 24/7 OSS services have been proven to be an innovative way of reducing costs for tenants and therefore the NDIS Scheme – making it an important part of ensuring Scheme sustainability.
The SDA Alliance therefore recommends the Australian government consistently include OSS as a stated support for individuals who have made the choice to live in a clustered SDA setting (inclusive of apartment, house and villa arrangements). This will provide the essential framework for the delivery of OSS to be efficient, consistent in quality, and financially viable for OSS providers.
1 Explanatory Memorandum to the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Getting the NDIS Back on Track No.1) Bill 2024
Disability Accommodation Alliance
www.sdaalliance.org.au | ACN: 629 769 615
Challenging or reviewing processes + decisions:
The Bill states that future NDIS Plans will be developed through a needs assessment. Consequently, if a participant’s needs are inaccurately captured during this process, their funding package will likely be insufficient to meet their needs. There does not appear to be clear power in the Bill for a participant to seek an internal review of their needs assessment. Moreover, while the Bill provides for replacement assessments, what remains unclear is when these would happen, or if the participant will be able to request one.
The SDA Alliance believes it is critical that participants have the right to challenge and seek review of processes and decisions including an inappropriate needs assessment (to prevent an insufficient budget being set on said needs assessment). These processes need to be unambiguously articulated in legislation to ensure the rights of people with disability are upheld.
Further to the above, the SDA Alliance is supportive of the changes to the planning process and the way participants receive funding as recommended by the NDIS Review (namely using a needs assessment to determine a budget, built at the whole-of-person level, rather than line-by-line for each support). To ensure these reforms deliver plans for participants that are fair and accurate (and the needs assessment achieves a whole of person approach), the SDA Alliance recommends the government codesigns the proposed assessment and budget setting process with the disability community.
We would welcome the opportunity to further discuss and collaborate on matters raised in our submission. Please do not hesitate to be in touch with any questions.
Yours sincerely,
Jeramy Hope Chief Executive Officer