Disability services axed as providers jump the gun on NDIS

AN investigation into disability service cuts is needed amid reports of people losing help before they are covered by the NDIS.

AN urgent investigation into the loss of disability services amid the slow development of a national insurance scheme needs to take place as reports emerge of people losing support years before they will be covered by the new program.

Mal Brough, the chairman of parliament’s joint standing committee on the National Disability Insurance Scheme, told The Australian there was evidence of state and territory systems abrogating their responsibilities to deliver disability services even in jurisdictions not yet trialling the scheme.

The problem, he said, stemmed partly from a misunderstanding about how the money for the NDIS had been allocated.

“We are asking the (NDIS) ­agency to urgently investigate with their state counterparts how this is happening,’’ he said. “The last thing we need is the loss of personnel and services to the disability sector at a time when they need to be ramping up.”

Mr Brough, who was last week briefed on the “very concerning” shake-up of service delivery, said it had resulted due to confusion about how funds were meant to be spent. The NDIS is commonly discussed in reference to the 460,000 people with severe and permanent disabilities who will receive uncapped, individual support. These people are in what the agency calls Tier 3. There are, however, a further 4.8 million people and carers who will qualify for a little-discussed part of the NDIS called Tier 2, which is meant to link people who do not have a severe disability to community support and information.

“Both the state and federal governments thought all the funding would roll into Tier 3,” Mr Brough said. “They now recognise that some of that is for the second tier. This needs to be quantified and assessed.”

NDIS funding this financial year is $673 million, 61 per cent of which is federal money.

People with Disability Australia president Craig Wallace said he had heard reports of NDIS ­clients going backwards in the level of support received. The ACT, the only provider of early intervention services, stopped providing them and the federal government has stopped funding a specialist disability information service without checking with the NDIS agency.

“There are some policy mistakes being made by the state and federal governments, and even parts of the federal government aren’t talking to each other,” he said. “The messaging has to get out that the opportunistic withdrawal of services must stop.”

There are also fears of an opaque complaints process when an entirely private market is ­created, as in Tasmania.

Disability Advocacy Network Australia chief executive Mary Mallett said some jurisdictions had no public ­advocates for people caught in disputes with providers. “There are very few options for anybody in that situation. The oversight is not very good,” she said. “The agency has signalled they will work on a ­nationally consistent safeguard system, but we don’t know what that will look like. In a system where there is no government-backed last resort, who or what is going to be the last resort?”