Today, Australian of the Year Dylan Alcott AO launched a new job site designed to connect people with disability to inclusive employers. Called The Field, the website has been designed and led by people with disability and aims to remove accessibility barriers present in other jobseeking sites.
The Disability Services Act has not undergone significant change in almost 40 years. Disability Employment Services, advocacy funding, service provider certifications and disability services regulation standards are all governed by this legislation. Since then, the federal government signed on to the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and conducted a royal commission into the violence, abuse, neglect and exploitation of people with disability.
Did you know there are more than ten different models of disability? Models of disability aim to help us conceptualise our disability: what makes us ‘disabled’? How do we experience the world? In what ways are we separated from non-disabled people? But with so many different models, it can be a real challenge to understand how we can best advocate for ourselves as disabled people.
But these direct economic impacts of the NDIS aren’t measured by any of the actuarial reports that lead to scary headlines and poor public policy responses, such as failed independent assessments thought bubble from the previous government. These reports only count the raw amounts spent, not what is gained by that investment.
Minister for Social Services, Amanda Rishworth has signalled that she will continue to work across her diverse portfolio to get outcomes for those who need it, while also pointing to “wasteful spending by the previous government”.
The NDIS Quarterly Report shows there are now more than 550,000 Australians with disability receiving life changing support from the world leading Scheme. National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIA) CEO Rebecca Falkingham PSM said the report showed the considerable impact the Scheme is having on participants, carers and families.
The survey also provides rich data that illustrates the stress and unpredictability of navigating the NDIS. There are insights into how the scheme could be much more efficient and simpler for users to navigate. As one told us: The concept of NDIS is great. The implementation and delivery needs to be improved.
People on the national disability insurance scheme who want to work will be connected with a disability employment services provider under a trial to be established by the Albanese government.
“The NDIS is far from perfect but increasing the involvement of Disability Employment Services providers can only make things worse. DES has been failing disabled people for as long as it’s existed,” O’Connell said. “Pushing a failed industry on people discriminated against and excluded from the labour market because of our disabilities won’t get us jobs but it will expose us to harm.”
When microaggressions occur in live settings, they are often ephemeral, with few bystanders. “When they happen on social media platforms, it’s happening in front of a large audience – the scale is completely different and then they live on, for people to see forever,” said co-author Aditya Vashistha, assistant professor of information science in the Cornell Ann S. Bowers College of Computing and Information Science.
The irony was not lost on Ms Rooble that, on her way to the inquiry, the lift at Melbourne’s Southern Cross station was out of order and she almost didn’t make it.
Longfellow is her brother’s only living relative, his next of kin and nominated carer. These final two titles should enable her access to her brother’s documents. But she’s spent the past three years fighting the NDIS for information, going back and forth with FOI requests, with many rejected or returned in heavily redacted format.
But provisions have been made in the budget to identify and reduce areas of spend and improve the value for money we are getting from the scheme.
The federal budget handed down by Jim Chalmers on Tuesday exposes the harsh reality that the Treasurer will never balance the books unless he arrests the spiralling costs of the National Disability Insurance Scheme.
A disabled Bangladeshi refugee has told the Disability Royal Commission he often went hungry during his detention on Nauru because he was unable to stand in the food line for hours.