NDIA Accountability Project

This project is in DRAFT

Complex neurodevelopmental disabilities and invoicing failures (Family or carer experience)

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Submission 338

SUBMISSION TEXT

  1. Executive Summary: The Architecture of Attrition I am the primary informal support (carer) navigating three separate, uncoordinated NDIS plans for my children, who present with complex neurodevelopmental disabilities. We reside in a regional area in New South Wales. Our family unit is currently recovering from profound institutional trauma stemming from documented systemic neglect within the state education system, which necessitated an out-of-zone school enrollment to re-establish baseline psychosocial and physical safety.

I provide this submission strictly as operational evidence to directly address the provisions of the NDIS Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill

  1. Specifically, I will outline how the implementation of mandated Funding Periods and rigid Support Determinations are currently failing. Our lived experience demonstrates that these legislative mechanisms do not foster “sustainability.” Instead, they enforce an unworkable administrative framework that relies on the “progressive loading” of administrative burdens onto informal supports, effectively using carer burnout as an attrition strategy to reduce scheme utilization.

  2. Direct Impact of Mandated “Funding Periods” (Addressing Bill Provisions on Budget Rationing) The Bill seeks to formalize and tighten the use of strict, staggered funding periods. I urge the Committee to review these provisions based on direct evidence of systemic failure:

The Retrospective Payment Barrier and Institutional Debt: The transition to new IT systems created a retrospective “hard wall” that legally blocks plan managers from utilizing current funds to cover valid clinical invoices from the preceding period. This failure spans across our multidisciplinary team, trapping

Submission 338

thousands of dollars in legitimate invoices—including invoices for essential Early Childhood Supports delivered in March and April 2026 that remain unpaid. The “Transition Period” Invoicing Failure: The Agency’s IT systems are failing to reconcile valid clinical services delivered during the transition between the expiry of old plans and the commencement of new PACE plans. The system is generating fatal error messages for services delivered in April 2026, effectively penalizing participants for continuing their therapy during an Agency-mandated plan reassessment. The Resulting Cessation of Continuity of Care: Because the system cannot process invoices that cross arbitrary legislative boundaries, the foundation of our allied health team is collapsing. Our Senior Speech Pathologist was forced to suspend evidence-based interventions. The clinician formally stated in writing that continuity of care cannot resume until the funding blocks are structurally resolved.

  1. The “Rural Penalty” of Support Determinations and Therapy Caps The Bill grants powers to introduce strict limits or “caps” on the quantity and delivery models of specific therapies under the guise of “value for money.” This provision risks active discrimination against regional participants:

Geographic Necessity vs. Arbitrary Caps: Residing regionally means specialized, trauma-informed allied health teams are non-existent locally. We are required to travel over 100km each way to access appropriate clinical care. The Clinical Reality of Transit: Expecting frequent 200km round-trips multiple times a week actively exacerbates sensory dysregulation and causes severe autonomic distress for children presenting with complex neurodevelopmental disabilities and CPTSD. Short, high-intensity therapy blocks are a geographic and clinical necessity to protect the children’s regulation capacities and prevent the severe depletion of their baseline functional capacity. The Flaw in the Bill: By allowing arbitrary caps on intensive block therapy delivery, the Bill penalizes regional families, forcing them into unworkable weekly travel models, or leaving them entirely without access to care.

  1. IT Infrastructure Failure and the “Carer-as-Auditor” Burden The Bill operates on the assumption that the NDIA’s staff and IT infrastructure can execute these complex new rules. Operational reality proves that the system’s functional integrity now relies entirely on the hyper-vigilance of traumatized carers:

The “Carer-as-System-Auditor” Failure: The current NDIS infrastructure requires nocturnal, trauma-induced monitoring by parents to identify and rectify systemic errors. The fact that the system’s primary “quality assurance” mechanism is the midnight auditing of agency records by an exhausted parent—rather than automated, reliable IT infrastructure—is an admission of complete systemic failure. Automated Procedural Blocking: The NDIS automated system is currently programmed to “auto-close” active tasks and bounce reply emails. This

Submission 338

algorithmic blocking effectively denies informal supports their statutory right to participate in procedural fairness. Fatal Portal Errors: To process trapped payments, I am instructed to navigate conflicting legacy IT portals. Upon attempting to submit a manual claim, the portal generates a prominent error stating: “You can’t upload documents… as you have a new plan.” Despite blocking the submission, the system simultaneously generates a “Pending Payment” request, leaving the invoice in a state of administrative paralysis. The “Reference Number” Trap: When a participant uses a previously issued reference number to follow up on a pending Section 100 internal review, the system fails to link it to the existing case; instead, it creates an “orphaned” submission that disappears from the processing queue, effectively delaying our statutory right to review.

  1. Systemic Discrimination and the Erosion of Informal Supports The Bill fails to provide legislative safeguards for primary informal supports managing multiple complex plans, while actively cutting the capacity-building supports needed to sustain them.

The Failure to Account for Cumulative Trauma: The legislative approach fails to account for cumulative trauma caused by failures in other government systems (education and justice). By applying strict funding caps to trauma-recovery supports, the NDIS effectively penalizes the participant for the failures of other government agencies. Disability Discrimination and Breach of Adjustments: Despite holding a documented Reasonable Adjustment for “Email Only” communication, the Agency continually breaches this mandate by placing unauthorized phone calls. This refusal to honor accessibility requirements actively harms the informal support’s capacity to manage their children’s care. The Denial of Clinical Access: The NDIA explicitly rejected clinical requests to fund 1:3 Short Term Accommodation (STA) and core in-home support. This STA was not requested as a luxury; it was the specific, clinically recommended mechanism required to allow our regional family to safely manage the physical transitions required to attend essential OT intensive blocks located over 100km away.

  1. Proposed Legislative Amendments for the Committee’s Consideration

  2. Ensure IT and Legislative Alignment: Mandate that before strict funding periods are legislatively enforced, the technical architecture must be audited to allow for automatic retrospective accounting. Valid clinical invoices must not be blocked by legacy portal errors, and system-generated receipts must guarantee a record of lodgement.

  3. Introduce a Consolidated Multi-Participant Framework: Legislate that where a single primary informal support is managing three or more NDIS plans simultaneously, the NDIA must provide a legally compliant, consolidated communications pathway to eliminate administrative duplicity.

Submission 338

  1. Enforce Reasonable Adjustments: Implement strict legislative penalties for the NDIA and its partners when they breach documented Reasonable Adjustments (e.g., preferred communication methods) for disabled participants and their informal supports.

  2. Cross-Agency Accountability: Explicitly bar the NDIA from utilizing “value for money” Support Determinations to deny intensive recovery therapies (and the associated STA required to access them) when the functional need for those delivery models was directly caused or exacerbated by the documented institutional failures of a separate government body.

  3. Clarify ‘Permanence’ Definitions: Ensure that the new definition of ‘permanence’ does not penalize children in regional areas where clinical treatments are physically unavailable, and ensure that ‘availability’ of treatment is not defined by legislative theory, but by actual, accessible clinical capacity.