City of Greater Bendigo submission to the
Joint Standing Committee on the National Disability Insurance Scheme Inquiry into the
transitional arrangements for the National Disability Insurance Scheme
August 2017
Introduction
The City of Greater Bendigo is committed to the original objectives and vision of the NDIS, and welcomes the opportunity to provide feedback regarding the implementation and performance of the NDIS during this transitional phase.
The National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIA) estimates that about 2000 people within the City of Greater Bendigo (assessed under age, residency, disability and early intervention access requirements) will be eligible for individual plans and support packages through the NDIS. These plans are to be developed during 2017 and 2018. At the national level it is estimated that there will be 475,000 NDIS participants eligible for support in 2020.
People with disabilities and emergency preparedness
The City of Greater Bendigo is currently the lead agency in a project supported by the Natural Disaster Resilience Grants program: ‘From vulnerable to resilient – emergency preparedness in changing times’.
The ‘vulnerable to resilient’ project was initiated in response to widespread concern within the community and with partner agencies about the need to strengthen personal emergency planning for and with people with disabilities.
“People with disability are known to be more vulnerable in the face of a natural hazard emergency. There is now evidence to suggest that people with disability are two to four times more likely to die or be injured during natural disasters than the general population (UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction [UNISDR], 2013).
They are also less likely to receive aid and ongoing support to recover over the longer term. Risk for people with disability is further increased when systems are fragmented and the responsibility for people with particular needs and capabilities is unclear.”
These are some of the conclusions of a scoping review that formed part of the project:
Disability Inclusive Disaster Preparedness in NSW: Enabling Local Community Resilience
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through Collaboration led by the University of Sydney’s Centre for Disability Research and
Policy (CDRP) and Asia Pacific Natural Hazards and Disaster Risk Research Group.1
Personal emergency planning is not just relevant to people with disabilities who live in areas at high risk of fire flood or storm - it may also be required if there is an extended power outage and/or a heatwave.
The Bendigo led ‘vulnerable to resilient’ project is consistent with the principle of ‘shared responsibility’ outlined in the findings of the Victorian Bushfire Royal Commission2 and the principles of the [Victorian] Vulnerable People in Emergencies Policy (VPEP) 2015, which continue to be relevant
- Supporting local emergency planning and preparation
- Integrating emergency planning with service delivery
- Encouraging personal and community preparation and resilience Planning and pre-planning
There are major issues and challenges in relation to planning processes and mainstream/NDIS interface issues that need to be urgently addressed.
The City agrees with the findings of the Productivity Commission Position Paper about the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) Costs3, that there are significant issues to be addressed in relation to improving the quality of planning and pre-planning with NDIS participants. This position paper and many of the submissions to the Joint Standing Committee highlight that too often there has been widespread confusion about planning processes, rushed phone planning conversations, and inadequate pre-planning support during the roll-out to date, especially given the pressure to process large numbers of participants within tight timeframes.
An important aspect that has not been widely recognised to date is the need to ensure that personal emergency planning is considered within the broader planning process. Clear outcomes about what formal personal emergency planning supports need to be funded under the NDIS and what role informal supports from family and friends may play in times of
1 http://sydney.edu.au/health-sciences/cdrp/projects/DIDP-Scope-nov16.pdf
2 Victorian Bushfire Royal Commission – Final report summary p6 3 http://www.pc.gov.au/inquiries/current/ndis-costs/position/ndis-costs-position-overview.pdf
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emergency must be considered. This is an important area that is in danger of being overlooked, as it is about planning what supports are required before, during and after emergencies, rather than a regular rostered service that is provided to an individual with a disability on a daily or weekly basis.
At present it appears that there is nothing in the core templates used by planners to act as prompts or reminders that there may be significant risks to personal safety that need to be considered and plans put in place. There is a high level of confusion about roles and responsibilities in supporting personal emergency planning for the vast majority of people with disabilities who are not living in disability or aged care facilities.
The NDIS is designed to cover specialist disability supports that are ‘reasonable and necessary’ to help people with disability to:
- pursue their goals and maximise their independence
- live independently and be included in the community as fully participating citizens
- participate in the community and in employment However there is nothing in the current NDIS planning workbook 4 that mentions safety or personal emergency planning. This is a critical area where the boundaries and interface between the NDIS and mainstream service provision have not been clarified. The City agrees with the Productivity Commission’s finding that ‘governments must set clearer boundaries at the operational level around ‘who supplies what’ to people with disability, and only withdraw when continuity of service is assured’. 5 Feedback from agencies and people with disabilities and their families suggests that some planners have gaps in their understanding of disability, and very few planners have a strong understanding of the supports that are needed as part of emergency preparedness.
There are resources that have been produced to support emergency planning with people
with disabilities (e.g. The Australian Red Cross Easy English Emergency RediPlan
resource6). However if there is no personal safety/ emergency planning component in an NDIS plan these resources will probably not be utilised. Mainstream services do not generally have the capacity to undertake individualised personal emergency planning with
4 http://www.everyaustraliancounts.com.au/wp-content/uploads/NDIS-Planning-Workbook.pdf
5 National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) Costs Productivity Commission Position Paper overview p2
6 http://www.redcross.org.au/files/Emergency_services_REDiPlan_easy-english_20110609.pdf
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people with disabilities, and planning for emergencies needs to be integrated with planning for supports required in daily life.
The consequences of not including personal emergency planning in NDIS planning can be extremely serious. Two scenarios:
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An individual who lives alone with no family support and no independent transport lives in a high fire risk area and may need to leave home during an extreme fire danger period. How will this be included in his/ her NDIS plan and how will this be arranged?
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An individual who is affected by an extended power outage during a heatwave may be at high risk of death or serious illness – even if he/she is not reliant on medical devices requiring electricity (remembering that the 2009 heatwave that hit Victoria and South Australia killed 432 people, or two and a half times the number of people killed in the Black Saturday bushfires that followed - and many of those that died as a result of the heatwave were people with disabilities) . How will NDIS planning consider the balance between formal and informal supports in this scenario ?
The need for personal emergency planning will only increase in coming years as the impacts of climate change exacerbate existing risks.
The ‘Emergency Risks in Victoria’ report identifies that “the risk of bushfire is increasing in Victoria due to two primary drivers. One is the increase in population in the highest risk areas of the rural-urban interface …The other is the trend to increased summer heat and dryness in south-eastern Australia associated with climate change”7
Each of these factors is present in Greater Bendigo to a significant extent. Bendigo is known as ‘the city in a forest’; it has a relatively high level of population growth especially on the rural-urban interface, it is already experiencing higher temperatures and faces the challenges of climate change predicted for the Loddon Mallee region:
- temperatures to continue to increase year round
- more hot days and warm spells
7 Emergency Risks In Victoria - Report of the 2012-13 State Emergency Risk Assessment February
2014 p15. Accessed at www.emv.vic.gov.au/publications/report-state-emergency-risk-assessment 2012-13
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- fewer frosts
- less rainfall in autumn, winter and spring
- more frequent and more intense downpours
- harsher fire weather and longer fire seasons8 The Victorian Bushfire Royal Commission’s findings made it clear that vulnerable people (including people with disabilities, children and older people), were disproportionately represented among those that died in the Black Saturday fires. Sometimes people with disabilities have died in disasters ‘in many cases, purely due to a lack of planning’. 9 As Australia transitions to the NDIS (National Disability Insurance Scheme) and ‘My Aged Care’, it is increasingly important that vulnerable people, their families and local communities are supported in considering planning for emergencies.
There is currently significant confusion about roles and responsibilities for supporting personal emergency planning with people with disabilities and other vulnerable people. This is an area that requires urgent attention during the transitional and establishment phases of the NDIS.
Recommendations
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That NDIS planning processes explicitly include a section on safety issues and planning for emergencies with NDIS participants.
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The NDIS planners are given adequate training to equip them to support personal emergency planning as part of NDIS planning.
City of Greater Bendigo contact officer:
Frances Ford
Co-ordinator Resilient Communities
8 http://www.climatechange.vic.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0004/323554/Loddon-Mallee.pdf 9 Media Release: NSW puts people with disability at the heart of disaster planning about the partnership between University of Sydney and NSW State Office of Police and Emergency Services http://sydney.edu.au/health-sciences/cdrp/projects/disasterdisab