Disability support scrapped due to poor outcomes for users, review finds
Australia’s disability employment providers will be more than halved, being wholly or partially dumped by the federal government after a review found jobseekers had poor outcomes.
National
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More than half the country’s disability employment providers will be wholly or partially dumped by the federal government on Monday after a review found they were producing extremely poor outcomes for participants.
The changes, which will see 60 of 104 providers across Australia lose some of their contracts, including eight that will be axed completely, affect the services offered to more than 15,000 disabled people.
The total value of the contracts being axed is $67 million a year.
The decision to wield the axe on the contracts comes as a result of an assessment process which began last December under the previous government.
In March the Department of Social Services notified badly performing service providers they were under review and warned their contracts could be terminated.
The review found that over a two year period one employment service that had received almost $2 million in taxpayer funds had only managed to place 30 people in jobs that lasted more than six months.
Over the same length of time another had taken $900,000 but only employed six people for longer than six months.
The changes will see 5457 disabled people moved to a new service provider, 3615 in Queensland, 3777 in Victoria and less than a thousand in WA, SA and Tasmania.
The 60 providers affected by the changes will between them have 215 services discontinued.
Social Services Minister Amanda Rishworth said people with disability deserve the best possible service in helping to find jobs.
“We are taking action to ensure people living with disability and who want to work get every opportunity to do so in a meaningful way,” she said.
She said poorly performing providers had been given “every opportunity” to put measures in place to improve and were aware of the formal review process.
“Everyone deserves the opportunity and dignity of work, including people living with disability,” she said.
The Disability Employment Service program began in July 2018 and is made up of Disability Management Services, which help people overcome an injury or health condition to find and keep jobs, Employment Support Services which supports people with permanent disabilities into employment.
Roughly 10 per cent of those aged 15-24 years have a disability and are significantly more likely to be unemployed or underemployed than other young people.
Almost a quarter of working-aged disabled people who are not in the labour force, intend to work or look for work.
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Originally published as Disability support scrapped due to poor outcomes for users, review finds
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