Federal election 2016: suicide warning over late NDIS ‘bungling’

The late inclusion of mental illness in the NDIS has been bungled so badly that people will die as a result, it is claimed.

There are warning that NDIS funding changes could lead to deaths.

The last-minute inclusion of mental illness in the National Disability Insurance Scheme has been bungled so badly that people will die or commit suicide as a result, according to service providers.

As the respected Pathways ­organisation in Geelong prepares to go bust by Christmas because of funding cuts, the union movement will begin a concerted campaign to force federal Labor to admit it made mistakes in the design of the scheme.

Mental health was added to the NDIS after it had already been ­designed by the Productivity Commission. The move was made as a last-ditch attempt to rescue Julia Gillard’s tarnished reputation with the sector but has backfired, the sector says.

“The theory is that we ended up funding an oasis in the middle of a desert,” Mental Health Australia chief executive Frank Quinlan said. “We know from what we read in the federation white paper that mental health is at the centre of failed state and federal relationships, which leave people in the gaps.

“So the first problem is the gaps and I don’t think we really have a clear answer on that; who, whether commonwealth, state or NDIS, is going to fill in the gaps?”

As part of the start-up process, states were allowed to transfer their existing disability and mental health funding into the NDIS but there was no direction about what services the states would need to continue funding for those who did not then become eligible for the NDIS.

Hundreds of thousands would miss out. Of those clients who ­remain, service providers get about $40 an hour from the NDIS to help them, compared with $80 an hour under the old funding model.

Despite the reduction, they are still expected to cover travel time, case management and all other overheads from the hourly rate.

Pathways chief executive Aly­son Miller met Victorian Disability Services Minister Martin Foley last week and said he absolved himself of all responsibility.

“We are trying to avert disaster here; forget about Pathways going out of business, there is a Pathways in every region of the country,” she said.

“The last thing I said to Mr Foley was ‘I hope you are prepared to live with the consequences of what is happening here’.”

Ms Miller said people would die as a result of the service closure.

In one case, she says a client who ­received one hour of NDIS funding for grocery shopping was found by a Pathways support worker in a suicidal state. He was taken to an emergency department and phoned his family, but the NDIS still only pays for the one-hour window.

Bill Shorten’s campaign stopped off in Geelong yesterday, but the Labor leader was talking about manufacturing, not flaws with the NDIS.

That’s something that needs to change, according to the Health and Community Services Union, which plans a state marginal Labor seat campaign to be ­expanded to federal Labor.

“At the moment federal Labor is only attempting to score shallow political points and is not properly engaged in the debate about the inadequacy of NDIS funding,” a spokesman said.

Mr Foley said he was “acutely aware of provider concerns about the pricing structure and have continually advocated the issue with the commonwealth”.