Dear Secretary,
My name is Danny McCormick. I am a disability support worker who has been employed in both the government and private disability and aged care support sectors for nearly 30 years and I am writing to you and your colleagues today in regards to the implementation, performance and governance of the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS).
I currently live and work in Tasmania, having moved here 10 years ago from South Australia where I first entered the disability and aged care support sector. Working for a public funded disability support department, I was fortunate to learn my craft in an environment of the high standards that a properly resourced agency, with a motivated, skilled and well trained workforce, could deliver.
It was safe, resected and provided clients with choice, dignity and consistency. Paramedical Aides (Disability Support Workers) worked closely with allied health professionals to deliver a wide range of support; respite, personal care, assisted living, physiotherapy, hydrotherapy, medication, speech therapy programs and more, all under close guidance from trained professionals.
For the last 9 years I have worked for a not for profit Disability Support Provider (DSP) in Tasmania as a Disability Support Worker (DSW) and Team Leader.
I am going to address the challenges in attracting and retaining the NDIS workforce, particularly in regional and remote communities, and the role of Commonwealth Government policy in influencing the remuneration, conditions, working environment (including Workplace Health and Safety), career mobility and training needs of the NDIS workforce concurrently, as I believe they are intrinsically linked.
Firstly, under the NDIS funding model , which includes erroneously calculated wage capping, providers cannot offer wages that reflect experience and required skills.
NDIS plans offer the overall number of contract hours based on complexity of the client’s needs but, apart from one very minor incremental increase, does not pay higher rates per hour. This does nothing to attract or retain higher skilled workers. There is no incentive for workers with the most experience and qualifications to support difficult and often dangerous clients when, at a base rate, there is no compensation for doing so. The clients who are in the best position to negotiate higher wages are those individuals with the greatest capacity to self-manage but they are often the same clients who have the greatest capacity to self-direct their support. This leaves the most complex support roles to fall to either the experienced DSWs who have the most dedication, or to newer DSWs who cannot find clients who they would be better matched to while still learning their craft. This is a multilayered exploitation system. It exploits workers with dedication, workers who are desperate to piece together a living in a highly casualised, ever-developing sector and clients who are at the greatest risk of causing or receiving injury.
I have spoken to several DSWs who have set themselves up with an ABN in order to provide services to clients whose needs are not particularly challenging and they are on a higher rate than the award, however they also have to fund their own insurance, leave, superannuation and other costs, so whether or not they come out ahead is very difficult to calculate. Allowing individual contractors to operate in this way is a recipe for disaster as it restricts the sharing of vital information and oversight. It is a shortcut to a dangerously unregulated sector, whose oft stated goal is to improve the lives of people with disabilities.
It is worse than a false economy, in this regard. It is an ideological position, bereft of ideas or logic.
It will burn through workers when the single greatest challenge to the NDIS scheme is retaining them.
I believe there are important policies and strategies that should be implemented to attract and retain staff;
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Introducing tiered complexity gradings for clients who deserve to be supported by the more
experienced and appropriately trained workers. Clients who have the most complex physical or behavioural support needs, including a combination of both, being graded the highest. Those gradings should mandate the experience and training required for a DSW to provide support and, as such, pay a graded rate of pay. This would allow appropriately skilled and dedicated DSWs to choose to support the most challenging roles and to be appropriately rewarded for their dedication. DSWs will know that there will be greater opportunities for financial and career advancement if they remain employed within the sector and continue to increase their knowledge.
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Implement portable long service leave. As the NDIS has become a singular funding source for
almost the entire disability sector, and as clients have the freedom to move between support providers, it is an artificial construct that keeps DSWs from ever having the opportunity to access Long Service Leave, regardless of how many years the spend in the sector. It also places an unreasonable choice upon DSWs to choose between providing consistent support to an individual or remaining with an employer. If the NDIS is about client choice, the lack of portability of Long Service Leave entitlements is a significant barrier to providing that choice. Portable Long Service Leave is used in other sectors to retain workers, and those schemes are not seen as an unaffordable cost, despite the funding of those sectors coming from a far wider variety of sources.
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Create a Government owned national disability support provider. Just as the ABC sets the
standards of service delivery in communication, media and arts, a national DSP would be able to set standards and create shareable resources which would benefit and streamline the entire sector. As an employer of choice, it would be best positioned to deliver services to regional areas where the private model cannot guarantee financial viability. As a publicly funded entity, it would be able to wear the costs of creating sector wide tools and policies which would then free up private operators from the burden of individually creating and replicating systems which rarely mesh with other support organisations. Workers would benefit from a system which would not vary from employer to employer. Clients would benefit the most however, as their would never be a lack of access to supports in regional and isolated areas, it would be easier to transition between providers with shared systems and tools, there would be greater oversight of the workforce and, if produced in conjunction with a national register or database of DSWs, would provide greater security for clients and their families.
I would like to think that this sector, which I love, can continue to grow in scope and professionalism, but it will not happen without an appropriately well trained, motivated and dedicated workforce. The first best opportunity to address this was lost with the neglect of the TAFE system but the next best opportunity is now. As they say, the best time to plant a tree was 5 years ago. The second best time is today.
I look forward to today getting here as soon as possible.
Yours sincerely,
Danny McCormick.
16th of April, 2020