The expectation that people will be endlessly patient when facing such critical issues due to agency errors and a lack of communication is plain dangerous.
There is so much change in the NDIS sector right now and people are worried. Some of the new, but still rather vague rules from recent legislation change have taken effect this week, but most of us in the sector are still scratching our heads asking so what will this do to help cost blow outs.
We have seen 222 recommendations from a massive Disability Sector Royal Commission with hundreds not even accepted in full or actioned in any observable way yet in the last few months we have seen rapid development of legislation with next to know engagement with the sector passed and not implemented.
Mr Shorten’s own words stated that this change won’t affect the majority of people on NDIS in any way. The items he mentioned recently this new legislation would stop funding are items practically no one ever gets approved yet this minor piece of work with next to no impact on the $40 billion a year cost blow outs of NDIS seems to be the major focus. That’s a worry for us in the sector.
Cost blow outs are from a lack of foundational supports, state-based services and NDIS being the only option for most people now using a the most expensive model possible. The mess that NDIS is with the way it is run so inefficiently. That’s what needs urgent fixing.
The vast majority of people with disability could care less about these the minor items this legislation is cutting out. What we care about is the cost of living and housing crisis, becoming homeless or forced into hospital admission because the NDIS take months to fix their own mistakes or administration hold ups that aren’t complex but take too long.
We need urgent, concrete fixes for the cost blow outs and the mess that NDIS has become and these changes recently and the legislation at hand, still represent little impact on any of that.
What was the point of the Disability Royal Commission and its 222 recommendations to fix the sector? It seems it has been shelved in favour of attention grabs to sound like they doing something, but in reality, we are all still waiting for action and codesign. We need vast, interagency collaboration at state and federal levels, clear understanding and expectations for department to align and real case management, face to face, to bring the human back to human services.
People living with disability and their families don’t have time to play politics. We simply want to see sensible action that is not far left or far right but addresses the major issues we currently see in Australia with concrete action and codesign in a balanced, intelligent and well budgeted way.
This week I heard repeated stories from people living with disability, receiving significant funding for 24-hour services due to extreme, complex needs, still unable to contact or talk to any NDIS delegate with any ability to support them in any way, during critical and crisis matters, with waits of over two months typical – these are times they cannot wait.
This is a list of the things I hear on a daily basis:
- You can no longer look up and find your local NDIS office phone numbers or emails – providers and participants are only able to access the National Call Centre and generic email. The NDIS website gives the Services Australia address only with no number or email.
- Agency staff refuse to give out their emails and direct contact phone numbers anymore.
- Agency communication is now from ‘no reply’ emails as standard even when from individual delegates.
- NDIS calls participants and providers from blocked numbers and if you miss that call about your crisis matter there is no way to return the call to the person as they cannot provide a call back number, the call centre cannot transfer you to them, you cannot email them and you have missed your chance if you were called while using the toilet or showering.
- Participants and providers are not told who their planners are and how to contact them.
- Planning meetings do not appear to occur anymore, even over the phone for many high-cost plans.
- Providers cannot contact planners to provide information for plan reviews or ask questions.
- Participants cannot contact planners to ask questions or tell them if they even need funding anymore.
- No stakeholders can contact NDIS delegates to discuss anything relating to plan reviews.
- Even when consent forms are provided and participants and nominees ask for their support coordinator or provider to discuss critical matters with NDIS the agency systems do not seem to have capacity to record these consents while some participants are having to resubmit this multiple times in the same month.
- NDIA complaints staff are too busy to help during crisis with typical experiences reported that complaints staff are not contacting people following complaints about crisis situations for over a month.
- Despite an alleged ‘triage’ service people can contact the call centre daily reporting the same critical situation when participants are at immediate risk and still not receive a response for weeks or months from NDIA/S.
- Even when attending local NDIS offices, front of house staff may not have the skill or experience to help and may then be in the position to try and support an irate family member, provider or participant who has had enough and reached their breaking point.
- Ministerial staff are too busy to help in a time of crisis also and will typically refer matters back to the complaints team who may get back in touch within a month or two but have little power to action anything.
- Complaints team staff are used as the point of call for issues. Many matters don’t require a complaints process but need simple, immediate action by an authorised delegate. The complaints process seems to be little more than something to bide time and try to redirect a very real and critical matter.
I expect more and more people will start going to NDIS offices unannounced, given no systems to make an appointment in the first place, to plead their case or rage in distress given no other option. This is a perfect storm from what appears to be deliberate design or an absence of thought about what it means for frontline staff.
While going and fronting your local NDIS office is an option for those in many areas, if you are in a rural or remote area you essentially cut off completely if you can’t get call backs, email contacts or a timely response. That’s a terrifying thought.
The expectation that people will be endlessly patient when facing such critical issues due to agency errors and a lack of communication is plain dangerous. Their patience is running out, if it hasn’t already.
I, along with the millions of Australian’s living with disability need to hear less about legislation change and what the plans are for reform and basic procedural changes to bring the human back to NDIS fast. None of this requires legislation change.
A long-time friend told me today of how their son who receives over $400,000 a year in NDIS funding, had his NDIS plan automatically extended for another 12 months without any communication. When the agency did the extension, they made a mistake in the back end of the system which cut off all his services from being able to be paid for months. This forced him to contemplate a hospital admission even though he technically had more than $400,000 in funding.
One might expect that a reasonable person would consider a mistake with over $400 000 in funding that could result in homelessness, services ceasing and forced social work admission to hospital for a person that is perfectly healthy, would warrant a rather prioritised response in any other setting, but not it seems for NDIS who support Australia’s most vulnerable.
When my friend discovered that NDIS had made a mistake with their ‘automatic extension’ of funds, cutting off established 24-hour services for an extremely vulnerable and high-risk young man by mistake, they contacted the NDIS call centre repeatedly with no response for months.
They provided consent for their support coordinator and service providers to contact the NDIS to escalate the issue and they all had no response or resolution until, after months, the manager of one of their services went to the local NDIS office unannounced, in tears and demanded action. They were lucky to find a team leader present at the time that fixed the two-month problem in under a day.
When the NDIS makes simple administration mistakes it creates the risk of homelessness and forced hospitalisation of healthy participants. The only way to escalate and get resolution it seems now is to attend the local office and appeal to staff for action. This places staff under huge pressure and potentially at risk – not every can be calm when the life, home and health is put at risk due to basic agency administration errors.
I know many people that have worked for the NDIS and Services Australia who have been very upfront and explained that you couldn’t pay them enough to ever be put in the situation they were in again. They tell over and over again of having to try to de-escalate people face-to-face over matters their own colleges and agency have created through simple error and a lack of capacity to spend the time to get it things right.
When NDIS started, we had face to face meetings for each NDIS plan period. Everyone had the planners name and email to send them information to help the process go smoothly. You could look up the local NDIS office, find the office number call and talk to them and ask for the team leader or planner when something important that was critical occurred. That has all gone now in my experience. I haven’t had the opportunity to see a face-to-face NDIS planning meeting for more than three years, and we can’t blame it all on covid.
Removing the ‘human’ from the NDIS and regressing to this faceless system is creating immeasurable stress and pressure for families and participants. I worry that our amazing Services Australia staff are coping the brunt of this and when you mix complex behaviour, trauma, mental illness, family, crisis, and an inability to quickly solve mistakes that impact a person’s life in huge ways it is only a matter of time before we see very serious incidents and more abuse and risk in Services Australia/NDIS local offices.
After years of a Royal Commission and a NDIS review, I really thought we would be further along by now with fixing the basic things we have to get right to protect and support the 4.4 million Australian’s living with disability.
Many of the procedure changes we have seen that have resulted in a lack of safeguards, checks and balances, overservicing, overspending and risks of rorting are just that, procedure changes. Much of that does not require legislation to fix.
What the sector is calling out for is old school, good, professional practice, checks and balances. Can we not put our energy into this while legislation for big picture amendments is debated?
The cost of violence, abuse, neglect and exploitation on the Australian economy is already in the tens of billions a year on top of NDIS and Medicare spending. That alone should make urgent change a priority.
River Night is as an adult living with disability, a national disability sector advocate, carer, father and outspoken supporter for reform and improvements in the disability and NDIS sector with a 30-plus-year career working across disability, youth justice, guardianship, child safety, education, TAFE, aged care, forensics disability and mental health sectors.