Effort to find 2000 NDIS-eligible young people lost in aged-care limbo is faltering

The mission to find about 2000 youth left in aged-care homes and transfer them to the NDIS this year ‘will fail’.

The mission to find about 2000 young people left languishing in aged-care homes and transfer them to the National Disability Insurance­ Scheme this year will fail unless “dramatic” changes are made, according to the group leading an effort to locate them.

For decades, young people with disabilities but with nowhere else to go were placed in residential aged care for the rest of their lives — and often forgotten.

Two years ago, disability housing specialist Summer Foundation funded its own project to find some of the total 6200 young people believed­ to be lodged in nursing homes around the country.

Initially, Summer Foundation located 32 people and the NDIS agency identified another 183.

But 31 had died already, 24 had been in the homes so long they had turned 65 — and thus were no longer eligible to join NDIS — and 15 could not be found.

Since then, as the NDIS began its transition to full rollout, the ­location work has slowed.

“Things were a bit more flexible in the trials but this has tightened up a lot,” Summer Foundation executive manager Tom Worsnop told The Australian. “For example, in NSW there are no new opportunities to join the NDIS until at least July.

“There were supposed to be 2000 young people in nursing homes enter the scheme this finan­cial year. We are already halfway through the year and I still doubt more than 50 or 60 people have entered.”

The Senate released its report into the care of young people in nursing homes in 2015, following an inquiry which heard evidence from people in their 20s and older about poor support and social isol­ation.

“I don’t really have much to do with the other people where I live because two years ago someone I was friends with died,” James Bailey­, 28, told the inquiry in a submission. “My decision then was don’t befriend any of the old people­ because tomorrow you never know who might be dead.”

More than half those young people who did make it into the NDIS during the trial did so becaus­e the Summer Foundation went looking for them, with its own funding.

“This is not going to happen automatically,” Mr Worsnop said.

“To be able to achieve 2000 people this year, something needs to change dramatically.’’ Young people in aged-care homes — who almost always have severe and complex disabilities — are not treated as being automatically ­eligible for the scheme.

Summer Foundation head of policy Luke Bo’sher said teenagers with disabilities in out-of-school-hours care were automatically included­ in the NDIS but not young people in nursing homes.

“For many people, their current disability provider has a strong incentiv­e to sign them up to the NDIS because their funding dries up,” he said. “But that is not the case in aged care, so in many cases we don’t even know where these people are.”

Young people in aged care, some of the most vulnerable in the country, would use about $1.2 billion of the $22bn NDIS and Mr Bo’sher urged that about $15 million of that should be brought forward to plan for their transition.