Joint Standing Committee on the National Disability Insurance Scheme

PO Box 6100 Parliament House Canberra ACT 2600

To the members of the Joint Standing Committee on the National Disability Insurance Scheme

Subject: information for the Inquiry into the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission

Autism Aspergers Advocacy Australia, known as A4, has long been concerned about the lack of training, registration, recognition, respect and support for professional behavioural clinicians in Australia - see https://a4.org.au/node/1071.

A4 has been aware of the NDIS Quality and Safegards Commission from its beginnings. We were very optimistic that the Commission might improve service quality and safety for autistic people, particularly for autistic NDIS participants. We were disappointed that the scope of the Commission is limited to the NDIS.

Regrettably, we find the Commission, even in its limited jurisdiction, is very disappointing.

A record of communication with the Commission shows that on 13/9/2018, A4’s Convenor wrote to the Commission about an NDIS participant in a hospital. A4 reported that an NDIS participant was concerned that:

• XX has now been in the hospital for 209 day and is confined to his room;
• his behaviour and health are deteriorating [while in hospital],
• he is being physically restrained to be “medicated”, and
• I understand that he is being chemically restrained (sedated).

and that “He has not had a functional assessment and he does not have a behaviour management plan”. A4 expected that the latter issues were in the jurisdiction of the Commission since the man was a NDIS participant and those things are the direct concern of the Commission.

The records show that the Commission dismissed the concerns saying they contacted the hospital and “we were told Mr XX appears to have gained weight and the hospital have said that he is well”. Please note that A4 did not raise concerns about his weight and we only mentioned his health in association with his behaviour - we did not regard weight and general health to be issues for the Commission.

The communication does not indicate that the Commission investigated the concerns raised, and did not contact the NDIS or NDIS service providers in relation to the concerns A4 raised. We regard this as completely unsatisfactory.

This experience quickly convinced us that raising concerns with the Commission is futile.

Concerns Regarding Understanding Clinical Needs

We are concerned that the Commission does not understand the clinical needs of autistic people and the lack of national professional clinical structures to support behavioural professionals. For example, the Commission presented at a recent AABA conference demonstrated that the Commission did not understand properly the background to the absence of professional registration in Australia or the nature of international registration for behavioural clinicians.

For the NDIS, in relation to behaviour support, oversight is an oversight.

In September 2020, the NDIS Provider Lists identified (registered, endorsed, promoted?) numbers of disability service providers offering Behaviour Support, as shown in the following table:

Some providers are promoted in multiple states and territories.

A4 has major concerns about the NDIS’s “registration” process forBehaviour Support; we would like to know on what basis the NDIS promotes these services and what clinical standards the NDIS ensures. We would be interested to know how the Commission ensures service quality or standards for the Behaviour Support providers that the NDIS endorses and promotes.

A4 is concerned that there is no real progress, nor discernible effort, toward developing appropriate registration for behavioural clinicians or to promote awareness of quality behaviour support across the disability sector and the community more broadly.

“The first step in solving any problem is recognising there is one.” Jeff Daniels as Will McEvoy in The Newsroom.