In May last year Samar Bain, 33, moved into a new apartment provided by the NDIS’s specialist disability accommodation (SDA) program. The home, in Heidelberg in Melbourne’s north-east, gives her the freedom and independence she has long desired. But changes to her NDIS plan mean she faces being forced to move back into shared accommodation.
Ms Appleby doesn’t need to be in a hospital. The only reason she’s there is because of a dispute with the NDIS over the details of her care and housing plan — and she has nowhere else to go. The figures show she is not alone. The median wait time is up to 200 days, and they say it is costing hospitals $800 million a year.
Our new research found specialist housing, that incorporates technology and communication tools, improves independence, health, well-being and community integration. New disability housing has enormous potential to improve the effectiveness of paid support and address housing and workforce issues.
“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.”
In particular, we want to discuss ways to increase the power that people with disability have over their homes and over their lives, so that decisions about creating the home sit in the hands of the people living in it.
A coalition of housing, health and disability groups has launched a pre-election campaign calling on the National Disability Insurance Agency to dramatically speed up decisions about funding for supported accommodation.
Specialist Disability Accommodation (SDA) has gone through a period of significant change, particularly as to testing a participant’s eligibility. More participants are going through an already rigorous process, only for the Agency to add further scrutiny.
A newly released report shows the Government is still short of its target to have no one younger than 45 living in nursing homes, and no one younger than 65 entering aged care homes, by 2022.
A lack of market information allowing developers and operators to anticipate the types of housing that is needed and where it is needed was one reason that only just over half of all eligible participants were receiving SDA payments, said Summer Foundation general manager Alecia Rathbone, who oversaw the report.
This report complements regularly released NDIA quarterly reports and the recently published SDA Market Information Statement, SDA Finder and SDA demand data. It features observations into publically available NDIA data and introduces new SDA participant cohort characteristic data. The report shares data and insights into changes in SDA supply and the SDA-eligible participant cohort over time.
She lived in a tiny room with no window, inside a home filled with bed bugs and stained mattresses, until a COVID cluster helped expose conditions in Hambleton House.
He said the federal government should consider a national community visitor scheme, based on the model in Victoria, where trained volunteers would be authorised by law to inspect the premises of NDIS providers. ““There’s got to be a safety net and there just isn’t.”
Some of Victoria’s most marginalised citizens are being caught up in an ugly turf war between rival groups of disability accommodation and support businesses that are competing for the right to access their lucrative funding packages under the National Disability Insurance Scheme.
James Latham from Department of Justice and Community Safety is joined by Bronwyn Trickett, an Advocate from Action for More Independence and Dignity in Accommodation (AMIDA), and together they provide an overview of the more than 130 changes to Victoria’s renting rules which came into effect on 29 March 2021. The changes apply to all types of tenancies, including private rentals, caravans, residential parks, rooming houses and specialist disability accommodation.
From September 2022, new homes in Australia will include accessible design features, after a meeting on 30 April saw building ministers decide to include minimum accessibility standards in the National Construction Code (NCC). After years of advocacy from seniors, people with disabilities, and advocacy groups, this is a landmark decision that will improve housing accessibility in Australia for decades to come.