National disability insurance scheme participants will be able to dip into their core funding to purchase rapid antigen tests for themselves and their support workers, but critics have warned the change is still inadequate.
The continuation of supports remains one of the biggest challenges for the disability sector. Many providers are increasingly worried about how they are going to continue delivering essential services with so many of their employees unable to work. Meanwhile, people with disability are anxious about what will happen with their disability supports if they or their regular support worker test positive for COVID.
Although she says she grew up independent, she had to “fight through” the stigma that came along with having a disability, you were “supposed to be locked up at home because of the shame”, she says.
“Last time around we were able to get a team to come out and do the vaccination at home where he’s obviously more comfortable,” Walker said. “I called [Aspen Medical] again this week, to ask them to do the booster. “They were really lovely, very nice, but they said they’re trying to do all the nursing homes right now. So they can’t do him for another month or two.”
“I’ve spent $1,300 of my own money on Rat tests so I can make sure my carers do them before they come in,” Campbell-McLean said. “The NDIS has not allowed me to claim that money. If I was living in a group home, the staff at the group home and their agencies that runs those homes are … able to claim this money.
The Victorian government has seized control of two supported care homes in Melbourne’s outer north-west after an investigation revealed coercion and abuse of residents, uninhabitable living conditions, forgery of signatures and access to NDIS services being hindered. Sydenham Grace and Gracemanor (formerly Meadowbrook) supported residential services in Sydenham and Melton South, which house people with mental illness and disabilities, have been placed into administration.
Disability service workers urgently need more support from state and federal governments as COVID-19 has caused severe staffing shortages, according to union officials and the industry’s peak body.
Joshua and Nicole’s case highlights a problem in the NDIS system where recipients of services end up taking on legal liability in the case of a dispute over payment. Jo Evans, a senior solicitor in the Consumer Law team at Legal Aid NSW, says she’s more and more concerned about the number of cases she’s seeing of NDIS recipients being sued or facing action from debt collectors over unpaid invoices.
Under these current policy settings, experts say, Australians with disabilities are being left to fend for themselves, as workers with little to no workplace protection fall out of the workforce in droves.
Large swathes of the disability service sector have been forced into Covid isolation, leaving some clients without access to vital services, while a major provider has only been able to source seven rapid antigen tests for its entire workforce in one state.
On 30 December, a senior psychiatrist tweeted out her frustration at mismanagement of the COVID pandemic in Australia using the “#LetItRip” hashtag. “Australia is a failing nation state with no leadership, accountability, provision of basic services or public health. Any wonder we are disillusioned,” said Professor Louise Newman, a Professorial Fellow at the University of Melbourne.
Staff shortages in the disability sector in Australia have gone from bad to worse due to a dearth of rapid antigen test kits and long queues at COVID-19 PCR testing sites.
“A $41.6 million funding boost will enable over 81 providers across Australia to continue offering advocacy as well as trauma-informed counselling to support the work of the Disability Royal Commission,” Minister Ruston said. 17 disability organisations would also share in more than $5.3 million from the Morrison Government to provide systemic advocacy under the Disability … Continued
But Ms Gibbs feels those with disability have been forgotten by state and federal governments as Australia reopens. “I can take all the personal responsibility in the world but if I need to go and do an essential thing like go to the supermarket, other people’s actions have a direct impact on it,” she said. “We are being made to ask enormous, difficult decisions so that other people can go to the pub … and so other people don’t have to wear a mask.”
Welcome to one of the bad days of living with disability or chronic illness. Despite what some might think, you don’t automatically pick up traits like bravery and being an inspiration with your disability shopping docket. Being in pain is hard. Being dependent on others is, for me, 100 times harder.