Dear Sir/Madam,
My wife Annette has written to you this morning so I felt maybe helpful to hear her husband’s take on the Toowoomba NDIA office at (defn T NDIA) and the obvious flaws in the system. There are 2 x issues here I wish to address Firstly my family’s experience & secondly what clear flaws & conflicts of interest with suggestions for improvements:
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Approx 32 staff work there at last count and I’m not suggesting all are unprofessional or unhelpful-only the 1/2 dozen we have been exposed to. All email evidence as both Annette & I are legally minded. The terror of the email system has spooked many a legal firms Senior Partners to sell their practice from my RE experience in Sydney City. The “NDIS system” of assistance as we now all know revolves around professional reports on the participants to assess needs which as logical as it is, doesn’t seem to be implemented or listened to at the least by (T NDIA). Their training is clearly cursory with staff prejudice and expectations of tears and pleadings from desperate folk such as us for some form of assistance with , ergo is grovelling required to access help? The poor educational standard & parochial nature of the (T NDIA) staff is also likely to be relevant at the risk of sounding arrogant but this is an inquiry. First impressions assessment seems to be the order of the day with our initial approach mid 2017 being one of rejection that a family of Real Estate Agents could possible be Autistic and be desperate for assistance. Annette with great heartache relinquished care of into the hands of the helpful Qld Child Safety Unit in late
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We had been spending close to 100k privately funding trusted sitters for now 15yrs with ($ we didn’t have) over an 18mth period since close to the start of our business. Combined with the 24/7 intense care required of this culminated in Annette’s total nervous collapse late last year and destruction of our business which we are closing as i write. The impact on Annette and our happiness as a couple was sorely tested and and we are as a family continually fighting (T NDIA). Annette has applied to the Qld Ombudsman to insist our file be transferred to a Brisbane Office of NDIA which appears hopefully to have been successful. thankfully with no credit due to (T NDIA) is now in transition phase to coming home which makes Annette and our whole family joyous.
2.Flaws & Improvements The report driven process is diminished by what appears to me to be wide discretion by staff on who meets the standard and who doesn’t as in our case.. The informed in your Committee may disagree but I can tell you from the front-line consumer this is the case.The reports by qualified educated people (Clinical Psychologists and Phd MD Specialists) aren’t the final say for even the most basic of help. It’s up the discretion of the staff with no recourse for the applicant. Appeals for reviews of decisions are either ignored or fail.
As i write this the “reasonable man” test would argue that we are either exaggerating or lying for some malicious intent. Incredible as it seems this happened. The staff appear to answer to no-one ignoring inboxs full of written complaints and request for urgent assistance with numerous reports backing up our claims. Your complaint is investigated by the very people you complain about. The generic email addresses provided by NDIA are referred to your local office you deal with. This is a fundamental matter that needs addressing as there is no oversight authority to write to. Previous inquiries in this country into eg Police have shown this to be an obvious flaw when no independent body is available . There is no ownership taken by staff to deal with a customer which is the most basic of good business procedures and you get either a pass the parcel result or the mirror treatment of I’ll look into it. This is my story from my perspective and possibly it is an isolated case and many NDIA offices do a wonderful job in distributing Tax Payer $ both fairly and carefully to those in greatest need. However please note that many women in this position are alone. The father/husband has long since fled the situation and sought a less complex life. Many women in this position are often coping alone and also many with their own psychiatric issues or high functioning Autism as is my wife (140+ IQ). She is smarter than I but I don’t mind as she is younger than I and has a wonderful fighting spirit. The other ladies may not have the education/experience/self confidence or importantly partner support to battle these injustices. Hence your inboxes should really be full of tens of thousands of submissions many even worse than ours. Hence my suggestion the reasons as to why that isn’t likely to be the case. We have both heard anecdotal stories of huge waste of tax payer’s money in service providers going out to buy cigarettes or ice creams for adults on legitimate NDIS Plans. I’m curious as to what line item that comes under?
- The issue of conflicts of interest is an important matter in all business activities. Imagine your real estate agent collecting a buyers fee for minimizing the buy price and another fee from the same seller for doing the deal? Gaol? Loss of Licence? All reasonable outcomes. How does this apply to the NDIS system? You have large housing portfolios (often non profits) who get paid like 4/wk / person in a standard home that houses 3 x people ie 12K/wk /house. These nos incorporate Qld Child Safety Unit paying the bill for the housing. The NDIS Plan then incorporates what euphemistically are called “line items” which in the case of my stepson amounted to $1700/10 day cycle as income to the entity for a single line item only of which there are dozens. The back of the envelope math from such a biz is: Cost of staff for 3 children/wk say 5000/wk and that’s generous. Cost of home incl rates / power etc 600/wk @ 400k @ 6% purchase
Summary: Income 8500/wk
Costs 5600/wk say 3k/wk ie 156K /yr / house
Run 10 house portfolio now your talking real money at 1.56Mil/yr with 100% occupancy which seems to be normal as these services are alwys in short supply. according to Child Safety Qld. Note these are country prices where the cost of purchase is low compared to city urban. Then again the cost to Child Safety Qld is much higher so effectively math isn’t so dissimilar.Also the housing is generally in cheaper areas ie you wouldn’t do this in
Mosman LNS
This has the effect of a financial disincentive to transition the children home to their parents which is what we experienced with until we forced the issue and is on his way home. In addition you have both lateral and vertical integration of these businesses into service providers in-house and or outside consultants with 20% or more referral fees by the housing biz. Surely another conflict of interest? An aside for the unexposed to non profit operations.. In June of each fin yr you ensure the legal entity doesn’t make a profit by either buying property to house more folk with disabilities or bring forward contracts to equip those you currently own. Good system and all completely legal. Haven’t accounted for rate holidays & no land tax etc for NPs. If you have waded through my ditty congrats as i hope it sheds some light on our experience and proves helpful to your committee..
- Kind regards