National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Getting the NDIS Back on Track No. 1) Bill 2024

Submission 14

9 July 2024

everj A1,1lraliah C,Ol, h DEFEND CHOICE & CONTROL.

Submission! am extremely pleased that the Senate is giving individuals a chance to have a say in relation to NDIS Amendment Act. This is feedback to give the committee some extra understanding of what is happening out in the community to carers who look after profoundly disabled people 24/7, over and above those ah’eady in hand. I have personally been involved with a profoundly disabled young person for over 43 years. First up the NDIS is a great scheme and the two-year funding was working well for us - that is up until about November last year when accounts we previously received monthly and fortnightly from se1vice providers were taking longer than nonnal to be reimbursed by NDIS. A result of this was that the se1vice providers sta1ted sending weekly accounts that more than doubled our workload - i.e. checking rosters, hours, payments, invoices and the se1vices were actually provided. It appears that NDIS reimbursements are now taking even longer and have become harder to check and so1t out as all the individual se1vice provider payments are accumulated into one payment making it in some cases extremely difficult to check especially if reimbursements for several weeks together with travel allowances are accumulated into one payment This I believe is another avenue that may well be open to abuse as the checking we do with our se1vice providers re hours, spread of hours, invoices and se1vices delivered needs constant supe1vision. Our workload has doubled, carers of 24/7 clients are single parents who often are on a pension of $500 per week without super and or sick pay let alone able to have a holiday. Please tiy and find a solution to ease the carers workload and personal financial hardships And Address why the problems re NDIS reimbursement have been adversely impacted the work load of carers. Many thanks