SUBMISSION TO SENATE ENQUIRY ON NDIS BILL

29 May 2026

From: Janis Bailey

                    Who am I?

I facilitate a social group for intellectually disabled, younger adults (mostly 18-40) via a service club. We are located in regional Queensland.

We offer a range of activities, around 50 events per year. All activities avail themselves of people and places in the community, and our participants use their social and community participation funding to attend. We keep costs for participants at a minimum, as it’s mostly volunteer club and community labour. We have been going for 8 years.

As examples: we run a monthly Lawn Bowls and social/dancing event, in partnership with the local bowls team and the club where they are located. We run theatre programs with the local community theatre (with modest funding from Council to pay a facilitator). We run short workshops (3-6 sessions) in furniture restoring, singing, jewellery making etc, which vary from year to year. We do a heap of community work, adressed below, which benefits other in the community.

I thus have a unique perspective on the needs of adults with intellectual disabilities – I hasten to add it is ID plus, plus, plus; many of our participants have genetic syndromes (eg Prader-Will, Down syndrome) which affect their sight, hearing and mobility, and autism as well. I am not paid to do the work I do, I am not a person with a disability (nor, currently, the parent of one1), I am not a ‘disability provider’ in the normally accepted sense. Thus, by contact with over 50 people with ID over 8 years (at any one time we have about 25 on our books) and their families and supports. and with no vested interest myself whatsoever, I believe my perspective is disinterested and possibly a one- of-a-kind.

Based on my personal experience, I am incensed at the possibility of our participants having their social and community participation funding cut, as I have seen the positive difference it makes in the lives of PwD.

1 My son died in 2018 of cancer; he was on the autism spectrum. Hence I have personal lived experience.

Why does social and community participation matter to people with ID

       and with ID plus multiple other disabilities?

32% of adults with disability experience high/very high psychological distress, compared to 8% without disability (People with Disability report, Australian government). Overwhelmingly, people with disabilities are much lonelier than others (McDonald et al, 2018; Shut Out, 2009), leading to mental health issues and isolation. The health benefits of meaningful social inclusion are very strong (Amado et al, 2012; Milner and Kelly, 2009; Shut Out, 2009; Verdonschot, 2009). In contrast, of course, non- disabled people face fewer barriers to developing extensive friendship networks. Further, adults with disabilities are a generally neglected, under-funded group. Regional/rural people face further barriers to social inclusion, including distance/transport.

How can the Bill halve people’s social and community participation funding with absolutely no evidence base? It is cruel, unscientific, and contrary to the intent of the original legislation. No justification has been given for it other than the label ‘unsustainable’. For whom? These adults need all the participation they can get.

How do the young adults I deal with benefit from their social and community participation funding?

All of our members either have parents in the workforce, or elderly parents with their own health difficulties. Disproportionately, in my experience, adults with ID living at home are in single-parent families (as compared to people without ID). They do not drive. Often they live in isolated areas without good transport. Their only avenue to full community participation is being taken out some of the time by support workers and engaged in meaningful community activity.

Our guys do all kinds of community work; PwD are often seen as non-productive and the NDIS as an individualised service, which is absolutely not the case. Our members have created three community gardens, and do the ongoing work associated with maintaining them. They have worked twice on school veggie growing projects, working alongside younger primary children. They have run four well-attended community dance events, and three theatre events, to break down the barriers in a tangible and exciting way between people whatever their ability. In sum, they change the attitudes of people without disability to PwD – ‘we are all people’. This process of ‘reverse inclusion’ challenges stereotypes and in my experience leads to much more understanding.

Just this weekend past, six of our members used their social and community participation money to participate in a fundraising sausage sizzle, which raised $2,750 – those funds go back into running our events and, when there is money left over, it is

What are the benefits I have seen from social and community participation funding?

Participant a: over time has developed extensive singing, dancing, acting and general entertaining skills; co-admins a FB group; actively includes new members

Participant b: over time has branched out from a shy, computer-games focused individual to making videos, conducting interviews, teaching dancing and using his wide range of technical videoing skills in many ways, including community service

Participant c: was ‘falling off the cliff’, post-school, looking for work and meaningful social activity as a way of meeting people; now is positive, outgoing, up for anything

Participant d: largely non-verbal, but deeply engaged in rhythm and music and uses these interests, via their support funding, to be an active community member

Participant e: took up a sport while at school; post-school has become an accomplished para-sportsperson competing at state and national level

I could go on with a few dozen other stories, but as the old saying has it, ‘a picture says a thousand words’.

These are all people with an ID contributing to their community and in the process making friends and having a meaningful life.

Being part of a community fundraising BBQ

• Interacting with local Men’s Shed participants to create and play musical instruments

• Creating a community veggie garden at the local library

Participating in Lawn Bowls with the local bowls club – and apres-bows socialising

• Creating a community dance event to make money and break down barriers between people irrespective of their abilities

• Entering the local scarecrow festival; participants take control of the creative process

Creating theatre

In a previous year of scarecrow making, involving young children with ID

• Cleaning up the garden at a local church

• A random Christmas flashmob at a local market, to create smiles and joy

• Creating a native garden at a local club

• An early theatre project; the performance was ‘sold out’

• Innovative and meaningful therapy and mindfulness via woodworking in a real woodworking studio