Disability Royal Commission wraps up after week of Alice Springs hearings
The agency overseeing the troubled NDIS has admitted people in remote communities have been left waiting too long for services they deserve. SEE THE LATEST FROM ROYAL COMMISSION.
Northern Territory
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ONE recipient of the National Disability Insurance Scheme in a remote community had to wait two years for a wheelchair.
On the final day of hearings in Alice Springs for the Disability Royal Commission, officials from the National Disability Insurance Agency, which oversees the troubled scheme, acknowledged shortfalls in delivery of basic and crucial resources to disabled Territorians.
Counsel assisting the Disability Royal Commission Patrick Griffin SC asked officials how it was possible for one person in the remote Territory community of Ngukurr to wait two years for a wheelchair.
NDIA national delivery general manager Scott McNaughton said wait times for key resources were “simply not good enough”.
“The first thing was in March this year we changed our policy settings to remove the need for quotes for wheelchairs or assistive technology up to $15,000,” Mr McNaughton said.
“And what this happened was - quotes were going back and forth and back and forth, and that was just adding time. And then a quote would expire after 60 days and you had to get another quote.
“So, we have removed the need for that altogether.”
Mr McNaughton said the NDIA now had internal key performance indicators which aimed to have some services delivered within 60 to 90 days.
“(90 days) is a very long time for someone in that situation,” Mr Griffin observed.
“I guess it depends, counsel ... if there’s been a catastrophic spinal injury the person will be in hospital in Darwin, we will be working on their exit from hospital to have that equipment for them,” Mr McNaughton responded.
He said standard wheelchairs were “readily available” but delays were experienced if a person needed a “very bespoke build of a wheelchair”.
During the past week’s hearings, it emerged that 83 per cent of participants in the NDIS in Ngukurr didn’t know who their support coordinator was.
These key roles were people who lived in Katherine or Darwin, up to 635km away from the remote Roper Gulf community.
NDIS recipient expresses longing to return to remote community
A DISABLED woman who misses her family back in Gunbalanya and whose husband is forced to sleep in the long-grass if he comes to visit her in Darwin, has told the Disability Royal Commission she is thinking of moving back to the remote East Arnhem community.
That’s despite Gunbalanya having no services able to accommodate her disability.
Paulette, 52, moved to the Territory capital to access greater support for a rare neurodegenerative disease known as Machado–Joseph disease.
She told the Royal Commission there were “no services for people with disability in Gunbalanya, only aged care services”.
But Paulette said moving to Darwin for more services made her deeply miss her home community.
“I am here by myself in Darwin without my kids,” she said.
“I miss my family. It makes me want to cry when I think of my family.
“They are not allowed to stay with me. I have a house here but it’s an NDIS house so they aren’t allowed to stay.
“My husband stay with me for a while over Christmas, but he’s not allowed to stay now.
“He has to sleep in the long grass if he comes to Darwin.”
Paulette detailed how support workers helped her go to the bank or office, describing it as “very boring”.
“If I was the boss I would make the NDIS come to my community to help me with cleaning and cooking in my home,” she said.
“I would also want them to help me go hunting for a turtle, goose, pig, or buffalo.
“And help me go fishing.”
A lack of culturally appropriate care for Indigenous Australians has been a prominent theme throughout the Disability Royal Commission’s hearings in Alice Springs this week.
National Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation chief executive Pat Turner said the NDIS had demonstrated a “complete lack of understanding of the circumstances that a person lives in, especially in very remote and remote areas, and the lack of services that exist in those communities”.
“If you don’t have that cultural respect and understanding throughout the organisation you are not going to have the returns on the investment, even the NDIA tries to make.”
Ms Turner said the NDIS assessment process was open to “unconscious bias because of a lack of understanding of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultural beliefs and practices”.
“I also think that change in an organisation to be culturally competent in their dealings with our people requires leadership from the very top.”
Ms Turner echoed previous testimony to the Royal Commission that the NDIS being run like a business was problematic, saying people had told her during the scheme’s early days that “you can make a lot of money out of this”.
On Thursday afternoon, officials from the National Disability Insurance Agency conceded that elements of the scheme were complex.
Officials argued there had been some “good work” accomplished in remote communities but that there was a lack of providers in areas.
Flaws in NDIS rollout to Indigenous communities examined
A LOCAL leader has outlined the issues faced by Indigenous communities when dealing with the National Disability Insurance Scheme.
Marninwarntikura Women’s Resource Centre chief executive Emily Carter said the troubled scheme had been created with a “Western lens”, ignoring local Indigenous cultures which emphasised the need for families to look after loved ones with disabilities.
“When we are talking about a cultural system, in the Aboriginal culture, it is our responsibility to care for our family members,” Ms Carter said.
“That’s a flaw (in the NDIS), I think.”
Ms Carter said Indigenous families were confused as to why they needed to set up an ABN and register as a provider to care for family.
“(The) NDIS has been set up more like a business and Aboriginal people are really scared to go into that part as well,” she said.
“There’s been no consideration given to Indigenous peoples of this country. Or people of minority where English isn’t their first language.”
Ms Carter said the NDIS was not fit for purpose, urging people to “come and have a look” at how the scheme was being implemented in remote communities.
“Who gives an oversight to all of these providers to make sure that they are doing the right thing?” she asked.
University of Sydney research fellow Lauren Rice said compared with the NDIS’ implementation in Sydney, where she had seen it “work so well”, the scheme was promising services “that don’t exist” to remote Australians.
“And frustrating thing for me is the NDIA were warned about that,” Ms Rice said.
“I sat in the room where Emily and others said, ‘please don’t promise services that don’t exist.’”
Family only able to spend $11k of $107k NDIS funding
A KIMBERLEY family has laid out how they’ve been unable to spend the bulk of their son’s NDIS funding because services in their remote township are simply unavailable.
The tyranny of distance has emerged as a serious concern among those giving evidence to the Disability Royal Commission, which is holding hearings in Alice Springs this week.
Geoff Davis and Marmingee Hand’s frustrations with the system were so bad that they “didn’t bother” to register their other sons with the NDIS.
And Mr Davis said of the $107,000 in funding his son Tristan was provided for his plan, only $11,000 had been spent.
For the sum, Mr Davis said the NDIS “ring me up two or three times a year”.
Funding to help Tristan get a driver’s licence has been unspent for more than two and a half years because there’s no service in the town, and the neurosurgeon who could give Tristan approval to get behind the wheel is in Perth.
The only local provider of disability services told the couple they were so overwhelmed with demand that other services funded under the plan could not be provided in Fitzroy Crossing.
Mr Davis and Ms Hand appeared via videolink from Fitzroy Crossing, telling of their frustrations dealing with the NDIS while raising their children.
“There is other things that Tristan most probably could benefit from if he was in Perth or Melbourne or Sydney or whatever because it would be specialists at the doorstep,” Mr Davis said.
“But in Fitzroy Crossing there are none.
“And so basically it falls back to the capacity of the people who are looking after these kids to deliver it.”
Another Fitzroy Crossing resident, Mudge Bedford, also appeared before the Royal Commission on Wednesday morning. Two of Mr Bedford’s children currently living with him have a diagnosed disability.
He expressed frustration with understanding how to navigate the NDIS.
“I can understand most of the western ways but NDIS – I don’t know,” he said.
Mr Bedford said a work colleague dedicated personal time to help him with navigating the scheme.
“If I didn’t have her help, I would probably – to tell you the truth – I would probably give up,” he said.
“I think most of the people that are on the NDIS in the Valley have already given up on them.”
Mr Bedford said he didn’t believe NDIS officials had visited the Fitzroy area and learnt to understand local Indigenous culture.
“That’s just like you take me down to Perth and drop me off and tell me to go to Centrelink when I already know where the Centrelink is in Fitzroy, you know.
“Take someone out and just get them lost.”
NDIS told family it ‘doesn’t pay for family holidays’
THE agency overseeing the National Disability Insurance Scheme refused to foot the hotel bill for family travelling with Indigenous children to get therapy because the scheme “does not pay for family holidays”.
In a vast cross examination of the NDIS on the second day of the Disability Royal Commission in Alice Springs, representatives from the Ngaanyatjarra Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (NPY) Women’s Council told of issues they had experienced in securing culturally-appropriate care for their Central Australian communities.
NPY Women’s Council team manager Kim McCrae and deputy chairwoman ‘Mrs Smith’, whose full name was not released, said living with a disability in the vast region across three states was challenging.
“It’s very hard country,” Mrs Smith said.
“Store price and everything is very high – sky limit – everything is not cheap in communities.”
Mrs Smith said people in NPY communities didn’t have access to phones, iPads and computers so it was “very hard” to access the NDIS” online portal.
Ms McCrae said the NDIS was providing more funding than previous disability support payments but decisions about how funding was spent was subject to the interpretation of the National Disability Insurance Agency.
“We had some – some families with children with disability who wanted to come into town and access some blocks of therapy,” she said.
“We thought, okay, good plan, bring them into town. But when we talked to the NDIA about using the plan to pay for the family – now we could pay for their transport to come into town but we couldn’t pay to accommodate them out of the plan.
“And the staff member at the NDIA actually said to me, ‘the NDIS does not pay for family holidays.’ That is not what we do.
“He missed the point completely.”
Ms McCrae said some Indigenous families were “reluctant” to engage with the NDIS because of lingering trauma of the Stolen Generaion.
She added there was a “lack of practitioners able to provide culturally appropriate assessments” or who were willing to travel to remote communities to provide those assessments.
Stroke victim forced to ditch scooter to access NDIS
AN INDIGENOUS stroke victim who relies on a scooter to get around has testified that her care has deteriorated since the rollout of the National Disability Insurance Scheme, saying she has to use a walking stick to access government services.
Emily, who has limited speech capacity following a stroke 19 years ago, shook her head when asked whether accessing the NDIS was easy now that the scheme had closed its Tennant Creek office.
The Royal Commission into Disability Care on Tuesday was shown video of Emily crossing the street in Tennant Creek in her scooter.
She agreed that making the crossing was “dangerous” due to fast-moving trucks and the poor condition of her tyres.
Emily agreed with the assessment that ease of access to the NDIS was better earlier in the rollout, when the scheme had an office in Tennant Creek.
But she shook her head when asked whether the service was “easy to access” after the NDIS’ office in Tennant Creek was closed.
Instead, she was forced to use the town’s Centrelink office, which was characterised as “really difficult to get the scooter into”.
Instead, Emily was forced to use a walking stick to get up into the office.
Emily suffered a stroke in 2003, when she was 25 or 26.
The Royal Commission learnt the door into the one-bedroom flat where Emily and her family live is too small to fit the scooter through.
“So in order to charge (the scooter) you have to park it outside and run a cable from inside the window?” a representative of the Royal Commission asked, before Emily nodded.
She shook her head when asked whether she was able to visit Alice Springs very often to buy clothes.
Instead, she was forced in once instance to use FaceTime to pick out a pair of shoes she liked.
After Emily’s appearance, NT Public Guardian Beth Walker told the Royal Commission her organisation struggled to visit smaller locations across the Territory, such as Bickerton Island, to check on recipients.
Ms Walker said a constrained travel budget and flooded roads in the wet season prevented visits.
“Ideally we would have a bigger budget and be able to do more travel, but we also use video conference which is – is not as effective,” she said.
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