Ms Clabassi said she had finally been granted a disability support pension last month after a long battle with Centrelink. However, after applying to the NDIS to get extra help and equipment around the home, Ms Clabassi said she was rejected last month. “They are saying they can’t classify it as being a permanent disability. Then what the hell is it? Is it the cold? Is it the flu?” she said.
“Many organisations will have a disability action plan and pay lip service to it saying that the support is going to be there, but when you actually try to access it then you are discriminated against or dismissed,” she said.
It’s been a traumatic time for Australia’s disability community. In Adelaide, Police are investigating the recent death of Ann Marie Smith, she had cerebral palsy and it’s alleged she died as a result of severe neglect. Earlier this week, the father of a Brisbane girl with Down Syndrome was charged with her murder. Yesterday, authorities discovered two teenage boys with autism locked in a room in squalid conditions, their father lay dead in another room. Each case has angered the community and it’s stoking fear among some who live with a disability.
Mary Sayers, CYDA’s chief executive, said that ‘‘all responses to a crisis such as COVID-19 must be designed to avoid creating further educational and social disconnection and inequality’’.
Dr Dinesh Palipana OAM says healthcare rationing disproportionately affects people with disabilities but the disparity is often quietly swept under the rug.
David had been receiving weekly visits from a registered nurse who administered injections to treat his schizophrenia, and also had an NDIS-funded cleaner and gardener, but these visits stopped when his funding was cut off.
The Federal Court recently decided it was reasonable and necessary for an NDIS participant to receive funding for sex work. Sara digs into the must-read details of this fascinating ruling.
One major theme of COVID-19 media reporting has been stories of individuals craving physical contact and struggling with loneliness. But for some people with disability, this isn’t just the byproduct of a pandemic, it’s their everyday existence.
Disability advocates say the death of an Adelaide woman with cerebral palsy is proof the system is failing the most vulnerable. Ann Marie Smith was meant to receive around the clock in-home care but was instead left in the same chair for a year – with police describing her death as ‘disgusting and degrading’. How her condition went unnoticed for so long is now part of a criminal investigation.
The Federal Government says it “wants answers” on the death of disability care recipient Ann Marie Smith in what police described as “degrading circumstances”, as pressure mounts on federal and state authorities to explain how her case was overlooked.
The Federal Court has ruled in favour of a woman living with multiple sclerosis who wanted to fund sex work services in her National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) plan.
The case of an Adelaide woman who died after being left by carers in a cane chair 24-hours-a-day for a year shows the community still does not value people with disabilities as much as it should, advocates say. Her death, which Detective Superintendent Des Bray described as happening in “disgusting and degrading circumstances”, is now the subject of a manslaughter investigation.
Sex workers are a “reasonable and necessary” item to be funded by the NDIS, the Federal Court has ruled. Disability advocates welcomed what they described as a landmark decision and said the NDIA must accept it.
Disability pensioners are turning to lawyers to fight for access to the JobSeeker payment, as recipients reveal they have had to skip meals and even stop taking medication during the pandemic.
Someone in my home got the dreaded phone call last week – he’d been exposed to COVID-19 and needed to self-isolate. And to my extreme shock, all our contingency plans actually worked as intended!