National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026
Submission 3712
I am the father of an adult NDIS participant who is severely disabled and requires 24/7 support. He is a nonverbal wheelchair user who has spastic quadriplegia cerebral palsy, cortical vision impairment, requires peg tube feeding, along with a catheter and specialised bowel management. The NDIS has enabled him to live a life of his choosing, in his own home, as an advocate and valued member of the community. He has great direct support team members and allied health professionals that work with him. He has learned to communicate with special AAC devices, and he feels very safe and happy in this environment.
I oppose the proposed Bill in its current form, as I am very concerned about the Minister for Disability’s new power to cut funding without appeal. Our son is extremely vulnerable with his very high support needs and any significant cuts to his funding would adversely affect his quality of life.
Back when our son was a child, my wife and I looked after him along with his two young siblings. We had some limited support from our state’s Disability Services Commission, but we did most of the care for him. Due to the evolving complexity of his care needs, it eventually became too much to cope with. So, when he was 13, we made an enormously difficult decision to place in a group home as there were no other alternatives available to us. In this living arrangement, he had 4 co-residents, all with severe disabilities. The ratio was 2 support workers for 5 residents. - Our son was miserable in the group home environment, as he was often placed in front of the TV or outside under the patio with the other residents with very little interaction from the support team. Due to the low staff ratio for the residents, everyday was regimented; he had to wait his turn to get showered and dressed, had no choice of when he would get his meals or what time he would go to bed. His only respite from this situation was his time in high school and regular visits from our family. Shortly after he graduated from high school at 17 years of age, we took him out of the group home and were finally able to get him a home of his own with 1 to 1 care. Our son hasn’t looked back since.
One of the main tenets of the NDIS initiative was to give disabled people choice and control of their funding. In our experience, this was clearly not achieved in a group home situation where all the funding of the residents is pooled together. It becomes the choice and control of the organisation running the home, not the individuals who live there. There is good evidence to show that independent living arrangements such as our son currently in, is a more efficient use of funding money than the outdated model of a group home. I would recommend that the Committee scrutinise this issue in their search for cost savings and deliver on their core principles of choice and control.
Anonymous
National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026
Submission 3712
- Automated decision making concern that algorithms will be used to process claims