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

Submission 165

equine assisted therapy

To whom it may concern

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

Name: Natasha Whitwell

Date: 11/17/2024

I am a provider who services NDS participants and persons with disability

I want to respond to the proposed changes to the NDIS Bill.

I am deeply concerned with the proposed changes about NDIS funding for animal assisted therapies. I am a registered counsellor with the Australia Counselling Association, and a qualified equine assisted mental health practitioner.

The clients I service are NDIS plan managed and NDIS self-managed at present, though I have recently applied for NDIS verification as a provider having passed my audit, so plan to service NDIA managed clients in the future also.

My clients range from young children to people in their 60s and all benefit immensely from the work I do, as can be evidenced by my google reviews and letters and e mails and feedback forms on file, which I am happy to share. These clients have not had much success with other types of counselling and therapy, and the very eperiential nature of therapy with horses in nature is what makes it so successful.

If animal assisted therapies are to no longer be funded under NDIS, then a very vulnerable cohort of people with disabilities such as ADHD ASD crippling anxiety trauma and anger management to name a few will NOT be able to receive the support they so desperately need.

This work is a labor of love for me, and the costs of maintaining a healthy herd of horses, not to mention the property, the counselling training, membership and ongoing professional development and professional supervision is vast compared to any income generated, I do this because I care. Please do NOT lump in animal assisted therapies with other areas of spending you feel are not warranted under the NDIS. Please also consider that those of us who are qualified mental health practitioners registered with the Australian Counselling Association or PACFA,

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

Submission 165

EQUINE ASSISTED THERAPY

delivering this service, are valid and professional mental health care workers in our own right$, in addition to being specialists in this field. I am confident you would not remove funding for non animal-assisted registered counsellors for this cohort of people requiring mental health support.

      I respectfully urge the Committee to take all submissions seriously in preparing its
  report.

Thank you for your consideration

Natasha Whitwell

Director

Seen and Herd Equine Assisted Therapy