Nice try, NDIA. Just when you thought we were distracted, you slipped a new NDIS Access Request Form (ARF) onto the NDaIS website. However, it’s hard to go unnoticed when you’re 28 pages and very purple.
Operational Guidelines are based on the NDIS Legislation and Rules. They explain what is considered, and how decisions are made based on the legislation. The new guidelines are written in plain English to make it clearer and easier to understand NDIS processes in a more logical way. The new sets of guidelines include ‘How NDIS supports work’, ‘Supports you can access’ and ‘Your plan’.
And now he is taking on the federal government over a feature of the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) that means people with a disability who do not register with the scheme before the age of 65 are barred from funding under the scheme. Instead, they are at the mercy of the aged-care system.
I spoke not in my capacity as President of People with Disability Australia, nor as a board member on any of the other boards that I sit on. I spoke as a disabled woman and a carer who, like many of us, has spent a lifetime battling disability and mainstream services and systems.
The latest documents, released under freedom of information laws, show that NDIA officials inserted an entire chapter into the latest review of the scheme legislation. That chapter recommended the introduction of independent assessments for everyone who is a part of the scheme, a change likely to take place by the end of the year.
The Specialist Disability Accommodation within Australia’s disability scheme has been overhauled from relying on ‘off systems’ to being completely visible.
Closing date: April 22, 2021
“People with disability are sick of able-bodied people patronising them and telling us how we should feel and react to things, especially with an organisation that’s a government department meant to have our best interests.”
“With no transparency, robo-planning could be used to exclude participants, cut plans, or change the NDIS eligibility criteria. And the NDIA would not be able to be held to account for such actions. The fact that robo-planning has reached the current stage of implementation is a disgrace. It should have been stopped long before now.”
Debra Blackmore, a GP with the Victorian Aboriginal Health Service, made the comments in a submission to the bipartisan parliamentary committee looking into NDIS independent assessments, which have sparked sector-wide backlash.
Police allege the syndicate skimmed NDIS funding from disabled users of the scheme — providing inflated invoices to the NDIS for rebates.
The Australian Federal Police allege the western Sydney syndicate fleeced more than $10million in NDIS funding in what’s alleged to be the largest exploitation of the agency in its eight-year history.
In 2013 the Gillard government brought in the national disability insurance scheme, but now the Coalition government is working on an overhaul. Luke Henriques-Gomes explains how the changes could prioritise cost-cutting rather than the needs of vulnerable people
He said the assessments were not independent and should be called “robo-planning” because, like robo-debt, they applied a mathematical formula in ways it should never be used. “Robo-planning could be used to exclude participants, cap plans or change the NDIS eligibility criteria,” said Professor Bonyhady, who was the inaugural chair of the National Disability Insurance Agency from 2013 to 2016.
In blistering evidence to a parliamentary inquiry examining the controversial proposal, Bruce Bonyhady said it was a disgrace that what he described as “robo-planning” hadn’t already been abandoned.
“If family violence and risk factors are not identified, it could put a victim-survivor at imminent risk of harm and is likely to lead to an inaccurate assessment and plan that does not consider the specific support and safety needs of a victim-survivor.”