Staff at NSW institution ‘kept disability jurors from clients’

Staff at an institution for the disabled in NSW blocked advocates from speaking to clients as part of an NDIS review.

Staff at an archaic institution for the disabled in the NSW Hunter region blocked advocates from speaking to clients as part of a wide-ranging review of the Nation­al Disability Insurance Scheme.

The Citizen’s Jury report into the scheme, released today, details attempts by one advocate, Kristy Trajcevski, to speak with severely disabled clients at the Stockton large residential ­institution to ensure people locked away still had a say in the NDIS.

Ms Trajcevski wrote letters and phoned multiple times, but each time her efforts were screened.

“The jury concluded from this that the staff at Stockton did not want the participant residents to speak with the advocate witness about the NDIS,” the report says.

“This raises several issues about the transition of power from the current service providers to the NDIS participants, based on the change from the block-funding model to the participant funding controlled model.”

The Public Sector Association of NSW has been involved in a protracted dispute with the NSW government, which is closing large institutions, with the backing of the disability sector, and privatising other services.

It denies being obstructionist.

The report was funded by the NDIS agency but 12 independent “civilians” were selected as jurors to assess the experiences of people actually using the NDIS in trial sites across the country — except the Northern Territory and Queensland — found the $22 billion scheme was largely delivering on the promised transformation of choice and control in the lives of people with disability.

“Unquestionably the NDIS is already enabling quality of life outcomes for some people with disability that would otherwise be unattainable,” it says.

The jury heard from adult participants who moved out of the family home for the first time and others who became employed after receiving living support.

It didn’t agree the levels of satisfaction were as high as the NDIS agency’s internal survey system, which has been criticised in the past.

The jury also heard of an overly bureaucratic agency and horror stories about the early withdrawal of other state-funded services before time.

The agency assured the jury that its planners were not measured on how many individual plans had been completed and that they have not been given any directive to reduce costs.

The jury warns that the scale of the program — 300,000 new clients need to be included in the next three years — translates to “a likelihood there will not be enough experienced or qualified staff to fill the positions required”.

NDIS agency deputy chief executive Louise Glanville said the agency was working to “refine internal processes”.