Unbound Disability Claims, Inc’s Post

👩🦽👷♂️ I'm a proud member of the National Disability Insurance Agency Independent Advisory Council Home and Living Reference Group! Our recent meeting on 16 April 2024 covered important topics. 🏡🏚️ We discussed community concerns about the proposed NDIS Review shared support ratio, housing shortages, and support for those in the justice system. 📝 The NDIS Review recommendations on home and living, navigator roles, and co-designing reforms were also discussed. Here's a quick summary with emojis: 📢 Community voices:  - ⚠️ Concerns about 1:3 support worker ratio  - 🏡 Lack of accessible housing, especially for psychosocial disability - ⚖️ Difficulties accessing NDIS for those in justice system 🔍 NDIS Review recommendations: - 💰 Funding to meet needs and support choice  - 🤔 Concerns about enforcing shared living for high support needs - 🔬 Need for more research on optimal home and living supports 🧭 Navigator role:  - 🤝 Should be an ally and community-connected - ✅ Choice and control for participants  - ❓ Questions about grant funding model and added complexity ✍️ Co-designing reforms: - 💻 Improving information sharing  - 📝 Making requests easier - 🙋♀️ Ensuring meaningful participation of people with disability Don't miss the full bulletin on the IAC website for all the details! 🌐 👍 https://lnkd.in/gS_g6mUX

🚨 DIA urgently calls on Government to increase Support Coordination pricing after it Fully Accepts Disability Royal Commission Recommendation to fund Support Coordination Adequately 🚨 Yesterday, the Federal, State, and Territory governments released their overdue response to the Disability Royal Commission (#DRC), which meticulously investigated systemic failures and abuses within the disability sector from 2019 to 2023. The DRC findings included stark revelations of exploitation, abuse, neglect and worse faced by people with disabilities across all areas affecting their lives. The DRC noted that Quality Support Coordinators and Plan Managers are the glue holding the NDIS together. The 222 recommendations were aimed at overhauling these systems to ensure safer, more equitable support and to ensure people with a disability are free from abuse, neglect and exploitation. Disability Intermediaries Australia (DIA) welcomes the Government’s decision to accept or accept in principle all recommendations associated with Support Coordination. However, despite this significant acceptance, the Government has not provided the funding required to ensure that can delivery on their Support Coordination commitments in this year’s National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIA) Annual Price Review. On the Governments response to the DRC, DIA CEO Mr Jess Harper said: "The Governments Response to the Disability Royal Commission doesn’t align with the current NDIS Participant experience. The Government claims to accept the importance of Support Coordination but won’t provide adequate funds to support it. Every day DIA sees examples of Support Coordination funding in vulnerable NDIS Participants being arbitrarily cut or just completely removed resulting in reduced access and support to live a good life free and being forced back to an NDIA chosen poorly trained, low skilled and expensive Local Area Coordinator (LAC). Last month’s NDIA Annual Price Review was a real kick in the guts for our sector and People with a Disability. Support Coordinators prices have been frozen for half a decade no increases, no CPI, nothing. This is 5 long years of cuts in real terms and far from reasonable or adequate funding for Support Coordinators. The government response to the Royal Commission’s recommendations is at odds with current practice and policy of the NDIA with no clear plan or funding to ensure quality support coordination for the most vulnerable in our community." DIA calls on the NDIS Minister, The Hon. Bill Shorten and the NDIA (Kurt Fearnley) to immediately increase the price of Support Coordination Levels 2 and 3 to ensure further quality service provision and skilled practitioners are not driven out of the market. Read DIA's full statement on our website: https://lnkd.in/gZQq3SHr #4aBetterNDIS #SupportCoordination #PlanManagement #SupportCoordinators #PlanManagers

An excerpt from Minister Bill Shorten's Op-ed in today's Australian, followed by my response: "In the past two years, the Albanese government, states and territories, the National Disability Insurance Agency and the disability sector have embarked on the big task of getting the NDIS back on track... Some people want us to wait again, to tolerate second-best outcomes. They throw their hands in the air and say: “It’s all too hard.” After almost two decades of working closely with people with disability, I feel I can say, we can’t and we won’t." My response: I'm not sure who you are referring to at the end of your article. I don't know who these people are and I'm certainly not one of them. I have been working incredibly hard to ensure that you hear the concerns in our community. There are serious problems with the legislation before parliament that we need to discuss. Key concerns include: • The legislative changes do not enshrine co-design with people with disability and their representatives • People with disabilities could have significantly restricted access to necessary supports under the proposed changes • Participants may be forced to undergo assessments to prove their needs, without clarity on what those assessments will entail or who is involved • Choice and control could be diminished • Some could be forced off the NDIS before alternative state/territory supports are established • People with psychosocial disabilities may face discrimination • People with high support needs requiring 24/7 care could be forced into shared living situations, increasing the risk of abuse and neglect • It may become more difficult to appeal inadequate NDIS plans For the legislation to meet the needs of our community it must: • Enshrine co-design processes • Ensure assessments are conducted fairly   • Avoid narrowing allowable support options • Ensure people with high support needs are funded according to our need and not in accordance to a cruel 1:3 ratio that will force us into group homes where we will be at increased risk of abuse and neglect. • Strengthen transparency and appeals processes • Not disadvantage people with psychosocial disabilities Please meet with me so we can work out a way forward to improve the NDIS and address our community's concerns. It's not too hard, we can do this!

What is Trust? The Oxford Dictionary defines it as a firm belief in the reliability, truth, or ability of someone or something. Trust is an essential enabler of cooperation between multiple parties who seek to achieve one or more mutually agreed objectives. When trust is replaced with distrust, it can be impossible to even agree objectives, let alone for the parties to cooperate and collaborate on any that have been agreed. Trust is gained through integrity and transparency. When each party behaves in an appropriate manner, with openness to underpin confidence that there is no hidden agenda, and with competence to underpin confidence that actions and deeds produce intended results, there is an opportunity for trust. Trust can often be granted on the flimsiest of evidence – a promise. Such trust can be rapidly reinforced through a pattern of behaviour, activity and achievement that reinforces the initial confidence. But trust can also be destroyed – rapidly and comprehensively – through patterns of behaviour, activity and failure to achieve, that undermine the initial confidence. When trust is abused, those who invested their trust experience loss. They lose confidence that expected outcome will be realised. They lose the expected benefit that should have accrued from that outcome. Those who abused the trust also lose. The people who could have contributed significantly to achieving the agreed outcomes will withdraw from an aspirational mindset to a defensive one, to the extent that intended outcomes will become unattainable, and that even more mundane elements of “business as usual” will suffer. Abuse of trust rapidly leads to complete loss of trust, where only a major circuit breaker can establish a new platform on which a new trust can emerge. Every Australian living with a disability, and all those who care for them, want to live with a National Disability Support System that they can trust. That is why, after years of trust being abused under the Liberal Government, there was enormous hope that the Bonyhady led NDIS Review would create a new basis for trust, and a hope that, at long last, the government, the NDIA and the disability community could collaboratively work toward the truly world leading National Disability Support System that the far sighted among us can envision. Please continue to read in the comments for the conclusion of this discussion. In the attached paper, I sought to alert the Government to the reality of its persistent breaches of trust. I doubt it was even read. Note that the attachment is protected by parliamentary privilege. https://lnkd.in/gCAhhsCN

As if this week hasn't been epic enough for the disability sector and disabled community, today the NDIS Provider and Worker Registration Taskforce's final report was made public. "The taskforce was set up in February to probe one of the most controversial recommendations from last year's NDIS review — that all service providers be registered with the scheme. The panel consulted with the disability community on what a new registration and worker screening system could look like and has now made 11 recommendations to the government. The recommendations include tiered registration categories, the introduction of a worker registration scheme for all workers, expanding the functions of the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission, and changes to the complaints process." Most importantly, its recommendations are NOT strictly that - all NDIS services must be registered. Instead, the taskforce has recommended a tiered registration system, with an option for 'Self-directed registration' which preserves the rights of (mostly self-managed) participants to use independent support providers and retain choice and control over their supports. Thank you to Natalie Wade and the taskforce team for listening to people with disability and compiling recommendations which preserve our human rights and agency as individuals. Here's hoping that the government response, unlike the response to the Disability Royal Commission, honours our rights and these recommendations. Read the report at: https://lnkd.in/gMsT3kb5 Read a summary at: https://lnkd.in/gXYxa3Eh #NDISReview #NDISTaskforce #NDISAmendmentBill #NDISProvider #NDISsupport #NothingAboutUsWithoutUs #DisabilityRights [Image: NDIS Minister, Bill Shorten MP standing in front of a white sign with the NDIS logo].

When patients can’t get their Social Security disability eligibility determination quickly because they can’t share their medical records, everyone loses. Every year, disabled Americans rack up thousands in medical bills and debt, waiting months for disability determinations. The solution comes in the form of interoperability between electronic health records (EHRs) and the SSA. Too often, EHRs can’t transmit medical records directly to the SSA, preventing timely disability determinations. It’s not that the technology doesn’t exist. Health systems using Epic have shared complete and comprehensive records with the SSA instantly for more than a decade. A 2022 SSA inspector general report noted, “SSA prioritizes adding partners who use Epic electronic health record software because Epic provides broad support for the data elements the SSA needs to make disability determinations.” #TEFCA, the government-sponsored nationwide health data exchange framework, can help other EHR vendors catch up. TEFCA has helped many hospitals exchange health records for treatment, public health and individual access. An expansion of TEFCA to include a new-use case for government benefits determinations, like Social Security disability eligibility, could have a profound effect on vulnerable Americans suffering from disabilities and the people who care for them.

🌟 Empowering Lives Through Social Work in the NDIS The National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) is a pathway to empowerment, independence, and inclusion for individuals with disabilities. As a social worker, I am privileged to support participants in achieving their goals and improving their quality of life. Social work is integral to the NDIS, offering a human-centred approach grounded in expertise, advocacy and tailored support. Under Capacity Building and Improved Daily Living, our role includes: 🌱Therapeutic Support: Building resilience, developing independence, and overcoming challenges. 🌱Assessments: Ensuring actionable, meaningful plans based on participants’ strengths and goals. 🌱Capacity Building: Enhancing decision-making, social engagement, and daily living skills. At its core, this work is collaborative, valuing each individual’s unique journey. It requires clinical expertise, cultural understanding, and advocacy for systemic change. 🌟Why Social Work is Vital to the NDIS Social workers bring a strengths-based, person-centred approach that aligns with the NDIS mission. By addressing challenges and fostering long-term growth, we empower participants to create meaningful change in their lives. 🌟Outcomes We Strive For From building confidence and independence to navigating complex systems, the results are transformative. Together, we focus not just on achieving goals, but on fostering self-belief and envisioning a brighter future. To learn more, here are some resources: 🌟 NDIS Official Website: Comprehensive details about eligibility, supports, and accessing services. A key starting point for participants, families, and professionals. Visit: NDIS - National Disability Insurance Scheme 🌟 Australian Association of Social Workers (AASW): Outlines the role of social workers in the NDIS and offers resources to understand how social work intersects with disability services. Visit: AASW NDIS Resources 🌟 Disability Advocacy Network Australia (DANA): Focuses on advocacy within the NDIS, offering resources for navigating the scheme with an emphasis on rights and equity. Visit: DANA - Disability Advocacy 🌟 Local Area Coordinators (LACs): Assist participants in accessing and navigating NDIS supports. Find more information via the NDIS website. Visit: Find an LAC 🌟 NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission: Helpful for understanding the regulatory framework and quality standards within the NDIS. Visit: NDIS Commission 🌟 Academic Insights: Journals like The British Journal of Social Work explore the NDIS’s impact and social workers’ role. Access: NDIS and Social Work Analysis #NDIS #SocialWork #CapacityBuilding #ImprovedDailyLiving #PersonCenteredCare #Empowerment #HolisticSupport #Inclusion #Advocacy

I appeared as a witness to give evidence before the Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee: Inquiry into National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Getting the NDIS Back on Track No. 1) Bill 2024 yesterday. I was also fortunate to have the CEO of DADAA with me to provide me with his views. Despite not being able to fully express my views, I effectively answered a question from Senator Steele-John. --------- Senator STEELE-JOHN: Can I pose a question to whoever might want to answer it on the panel? The minister has previously attempted to explain away concerns about the government's agenda for the NDIS and other changes in the space as a trauma response that disabled people have to any type of proposed change to the NDIS or disability systems. You are all exceptionally qualified professionals, and there are many disabled people giving evidence to us. Combining both of those, we've got some people who are both lawyers and disabled people with us today. What would your response be to somebody that would suggest to yourself or your organisations that the concerns you are flagging are the product of an emotional trauma response rather than an actual engagement with the text of the bill and its potential implications? Mr Monks: I will jump in here if you don't mind. I believe that red-herring type of ideology is what is causing the trauma in itself, because it's discounting and disempowering the voices of those with a disability. That type of narrative says to me—this is what I'm hearing, day in, day out, from people that we represent—that, while we say all these things, no-one is listening to us. Is it really a trauma basis, or is it that it's not being acted upon or considered by the government in a whole-of-government approach—if we say co-design, interaction and communication need to be better designed for people with disability... It's not a place of trauma; it's a place of experience that I'm coming from. It's not an emotive place but an experiential place. So that type of narrative I really find quite offensive. I think that we always go down to the common denominator of blaming the person, the victim, the participant, or whoever it is, but we don't take a reflection in ourselves as to the people providing this, whether it's the minister himself or others, to say, 'Is it the engagement that is the cause of people's hesitancy? And are those causes, and how it's being communicated, being looked at?' So I don't buy into that narrative and I find it highly offensive. ---- It was not the most eloquent submission, but I think they got my points across.

Seems to me like our Bureaucrats couldnt resist the "NDIS pot of GOLD"... Like its just been WAY too TEMPTING for so many of our government departments & agencies, that over the last 10 years they've all managed to find a way to justify their existance to gain access to "their fair share"... looks as if everyone wanted a slice of the NDIS funding PIE! 🥧 NDIS was designed to unify disability support under a single, national framework. The intent was to provide a streamlined, consistent level of support across Australia, eliminating the patchwork of state-based services that often left gaps or inconsistencies in access and quality. The original concept of NDIS aimed to centralize funding and service delivery to ensure that people with disabilities could access the same level of support, regardless of their state or territory. This unification was meant to improve transparency, accountability, & ease of access, so participants wouldn't have to navigate multiple systems. However, the reality has not fully aligned with this goal. Despite its intentions, NDIS has been affected by: 1. State & #Commonwealth Tensions: While NDIS was envisioned as a national scheme, the division of responsibilities & funding contributions has led to pushback from states, particularly in areas where they previously had control over services. 2. Scope Creep and #Funding Constraints: Over time, NDIS has faced pressures to limit costs, leading to restrictive eligibility reviews and increased scrutiny, as highlighted in recent cases. This has reintroduced gatekeeping & complex processes that the scheme was originally designed to overcome. 3. Unresolved "Foundational" Supports: The plan to have the states pick up #services for those no longer eligible for the NDIS, under so-called “foundational supports,” is still very much in flux. These #foundational supports lack a clear framework, funding, & delivery mechanisms, creating confusion and uncertainty. 4. Fragmentation: While NDIS was meant to streamline support, participants still find themselves interacting with both NDIS & various #state systems for different types of assistance. This hybrid approach feels a lot like a step backward to the fragmented system it was intended to replace. NDIS aimed to simplify and centralize #disability support but hasnt maintained this clarity in practice. The recent reforms & eligibility crackdowns only complicate the landscape further, pushing more people back toward state systems, which runs counter to the original purpose of a unified #NDIS. It seems they lied to us when they suggested the change in language from REVIEWS to REASSESSMENTS wasn't just to stop confusion about the word review being used for internal reviews... the last decade the "creep" of shift back to a fragmented, but now also intrusive framework is NOTHING even close to the NDIS we were promised!! https://lnkd.in/g6KDqy8F