NDIS to cap funding support for those living at home

A $700m annual fund that would allow people with profound disabilities to live in the community is subject to price caps.

The National Disability Insurance Agency says ‘only a very small number’ of the 28,000 participants estimated to receive Specialist Disability Accommodation funding would be able to live alone.

A $700 million annual fund that would allow people with profound disabilities to live in the community is the subject of price caps and new conditions, in another sign the agency delivering the National Disability Insurance Scheme is moving to ration support.

An investor brief on Specialist Disability Accommodation released by the National Disability Insurance Agency last month has, according to disability groups and financiers, moved the goalposts on housing and threatens to force people to stay in group homes.

The Productivity Commission estimated about 6 per cent of NDIS participants, or 28,000 ­people, would be eligible for housing support that would allow them to approach the market and find a supported home in which to live.

But the NDIA has changed the language in its brief and now says: “Price limits provide a ceiling up to which providers can negotiate with participants for the provision of (accommodation).”

The Summer Foundation is a not-for-profit agency that helps young people leave nursing homes for stable accommodation and leads policy in the sector. Chief executive Luke Bo’Sher said the paper was a “clear signal” from the NDIA “that people with a disability will be forced to live in shared accommodation”.

“This is purely for the purposes of controlling costs, and forcing people into shared accommo­dation against their preferences undermines the concept of choice and control around which the NDIS was designed,” he said.

“We have had a journey in this country over the past 30 years away from large-scale group homes that kept people away and isolated from the rest of the community and now we appear to be moving back into that era.”

In March, before the investor brief was released, The Australian revealed a pipeline of $6 billion worth of investment could be unlocked — if organisations could be convinced to come on board — as there is a gap of about 10,500 shared accommodation places needed under the NDIS.

The agency brief makes it clear that “only a very small number” of the 28,000 participants estimated to receive SDA funding would be able to live alone.

“In most cases a participant will receive an SDA budget that is sufficient for a shared arrangement (for example with one to four others),” it says. “Through the SDA funding, the NDIA ­anticipates growth in models that make use of smaller built forms, rather than a perpetuation of group home settings with shared in-home supports … most commonly constructed under state and territory systems.”

In NSW, for instance, the state government under then premier Barry O’Farrell convinced then prime minister Julia Gillard to sign an agreement that allowed the state to divest itself of large residential institutions and have the NDIS pay for it.

But the agency was explicit that SDA funding was “here to stay”, while acknowledging there was “no arbitrary cap on the number of SDA participants”.