Australian of the Year Dylan Alcott has applauded the “amazing” decision by the Victorian government to give people with a disability access to free rapid antigen tests.
From Saturday people on the Disability Support Pension or National Disability Insurance Scheme will be able to go to any testing centre and get up to 20 rapid antigen tests per day.
On March 15th, the NDIA published a new tender for their Partners in the Community (PITC) program, which encompasses Local Area Coordinators (LAC) and Early Childhood Partners (ECP). The tender documents make it clear that the PITC program, for better or for worse, is going to look very different in the future.
For months now we’ve been hearing of stories of people on the NDIS who’ve had their support funding cut. That’s sent thousands to the appeals tribunal – where people with disability and their loved ones are often forced to go up against government employed barristers to plead for their funding to be reinstated. Disability advocates say there are now so many appeals cases – they’ve had to turn people who’d they’d usually be able to help, away.
A coalition of 40 disability rights and advocacy organisations has endorsed an open letter to politicians running in the 2022 election, that demands a new approach to ensuring better safety and wellbeing for people living with a disability during natural disasters.
“These changes will reduce red tape, and remove a number of practical and administrative concerns participants and providers have raised, to ensure it’s easier for participants to access home and living supports.”
The Australian Government has today delivered the most significant improvements to participant experience since the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) was established in 2013. Minister for the National Disability Insurance Scheme, Senator the Hon Linda Reynolds CSC said the passage of the NDIS Amendment (Participant Service Guarantee and Other Measures) Bill 2021 will reduce red tape and increase flexibility for participants, their families and carers.
The Morrison Government will invest $100 million over three years to ensure people with disability continue to have access to advocacy and legal support. From 1 July 2022, more than $73 million in grants will enable 59 organisations across Australia to deliver the National Disability Advocacy Program (NDAP). Minister for Families and Social Services Anne Ruston said the program provided people with disability access to advocacy services to promote their interests and protect their welfare.
The 2022 federal budget carries little fundamental change for Australians living with a disability, or the sector working with them.
This week in Hobart, the disability royal commission has invited witnesses to relate their lived experience with sexual, domestic and family abuse. “I lived with the internalised shame of what I experienced because I blamed myself,” Akii said.
The rheumatologist called by the NDIA had drawn upon the “intelligence report” to find the woman did not experience “significant functional impairment” from her chronic pain, the tribunal said.
There have even been cases where clients have died waiting for assistive technology (AT), as service providers struggle to navigate the “complex” and “bureaucratic” National Disability Insurance Scheme.
Ann Marie Smith died in abject circumstances, at the hands of her carer in the middle-class Adelaide suburb of Kingston Park. Her killing raises questions about the way our society treats the Disabled, in life and in death. .
While film critics and audiences alike have shouted their praise for this year’s best picture win, CODA, they seem to be ignoring the voices of the Deaf community.
National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIA) staff reviewed the social media accounts of a woman applying for the scheme and sent a report to a doctor engaged to provide an expert opinion, a tribunal decision reveals.
The argument put forward by the agency was rejected as “extraordinary” by administrative appeals tribunal (AAT) member Simon Webb in a judgment published last week. Webb said the man was eligible for the scheme, granting him access four years after he had first sought support from the NDIS for a range of physical and psychiatric conditions.