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

Submission 302

To Whom It May Concern Re: changes being proposed to omit certain therapeutic practices from the NDIS funding schedule My name is Amber Louise Howard and I am an experienced Clinical Psychologist, Board approved Supervisor, and Board approved Program Lead. I write to you regarding the proposed changes to the NDIS, in particular removing the funding support for both animal therapy and somatic therapies from the NDIS payment schedule. I would like you to present my expressed dissatisfaction and request that they remain within the therapies supported by the NDIS funding program.

NDIS clients are often the most disadvantaged within the community, typically experiencing significantly greater levels of abuse, including financial, sexual, emotional, verbal, and physical abuse, with associated trauma. When experiencing trauma, many clients, including children, experience difficulty engaging with others in the community, including therapists. At times, client’s language capacity becomes impacted, often leading to deficits in their receptive and/or expressive language skill, which become significant barriers to clients engaging in therapy. By using a therapy animal in session and/or somatic therapeutic practices, the client’s engagement can be supported. That is, animals can be used to initially facilitate engagement in the therapy process, but also used to scaffold new information regarding a client and/or other’s expressed emotions and behaviour. Furthermore, the use of animals and/or somatic therapeutic practices can provide supports to aid continued therapeutic engagement, thereby increasing the likelihood NDIS clients have the opportunity to achieve their therapeutic goals, which support achievement of their NIDS goals.

Many years ago in my work at the WA Department of Health’s Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS) Tier 4 School of Special Educational Needs: Medical and Mental Health Service (SSEN: MMH) educational facility, Pathways, staff at this site used therapy dogs to scaffold training and support children’s understanding and expression of their emotions, better manage their behaviours, and learn how to better regulate themselves in order to approach and engage with the dogs in a calm and kind manner.

I also have a colleague who works as a registered Psychologist and Counsellor, who uses her therapy dog in therapy sessions on a regular basis with a range of children and adult clients, including clients that are supported by the NDIS supported clients. Many of her NDIS supported clients have additional challenges to accessing formal office based therapy sessions. This can include having sensory deficits such as sight/hearing/mobility issues, as well as difficulties with receptive and expressive language. She has outlined that by using her therapy dog in therapeutic sessions, her clients are also supported with the initial stages of engagement and the use of the therapy dog can also aid continued client engagement, where disconnection from support services had previously been a barrier to change. Interactions with therapy animals can provide for a different type of therapeutic interaction, at times a somatic therapy process too, and aid the client in meet their therapy and NDIS goals, whether that be psychological therapy, occupational therapy, and/or physical therapy.

I personally provide clients with a type of somatic therapy, Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR), to support them to overcome their PTSD symptoms. I have also become aware of the research around the use of somatic therapeutic practices, including yoga, which can aid the recovery of trauma. I had planned to engage in additional training to better understand these interventions. I also personally have a trauma background and to aid my own wellbeing, I regularly engage in a broad range of ‘somatic therapeutic self-care practices’, such as massage, yoga, exercise, physiotherapy, etc. Hence, I know from personal experience, their benefits to aiding overall wellbeing.

I understand that some individuals in decision making roles may not see the value of these services, and I am seeking to highlight that many clients benefit from animal services, and a large proportion of these clients area in the NDIS sphere., I believe it is extremely unethical to take away these therapeutic supports, which have known significant therapeutic benefits to supporting a client’s overall wellbeing and engagement in therapy, achieve their therapeutic goals, and ultimately their NDIS goals.

Kind regards, Amber Louise Howard MPsych(Clin) MAPS BAS Clinical Psychologist