TasCOSS News August 2014
Projections showed that over the next 70 years the growth in the group of people with a severe disability would be between two and three times population growth as a whole. At the same time the number of unpaid carers was declining markedly. Then, in 2007, came the idea for the National Disability Insurance Scheme. For the first time in this country, Carers Australia, the Australian Federation of Disability Organisations and National Disability Services formed an alliance to campaign for such a scheme. A Productivity Commission report in 2010-2011 recommended a national disability insurance scheme. The NDIS concept generated enormous public support and so managed to mobilise the community’s support for one of the most disadvantaged groups in Australia.
Implementation
Now the focus is on implementation. Critical to this will be a new culture of learning within a sustainable insurance framework. There will be lessons to be learnt at every step of the process, as
data is collected and analysed. The NDIS puts people with disability and families at the centre. It allows individuals to exercise choice and control in pursuing goals, planning and delivery of supports. Individuals, not service providers, receive funding. Each person can determine how much control they want over the management of their funding, supports and providers. The NDIS Act’s principles are independence and community inclusion. Critical to choice and control becoming a reality are issues of supply and demand. Developing supply options that support independence and genuine community inclusion requires a supply of new models of: Housing • Where people can choose who they live with and how to live. • With reasonable risk, commensurate with an expectation of adult life. Supply of work • Where people no longer work in closed sheltered employment systems.
• All Australian Disability Enterprises to transition to new models. • Integrated workforce. • Transition to open employment. Supply of recreation • In community settings. • In the arts. • In sports. Unless supply can be transformed people will continue to live, work and take recreation in closed system services. This will mean that mainstream systems continue to exclude people with disabilities from buildings, transport systems, schools, sports and arts, jobs, health and housing. On the demand side, people with disabilities need to be supported, mentored and inspired to demand options that optimise independence, self-management and integration with the mainstream community. If this demand isn’t supported, the NDIS will not have the transformational effects reflected in the Act. People’s potential will remain unfulfilled. Specialist services will expand, allowing the mainstream to continue to exclude people with disabilities. For choice and control to become a reality we must see support for people with disabilities to choose mainstream services. And there must be support for people with disabilities and families to try new options, to take reasonable risks and choose to live lives that encourage more independence in the community. This article is based on the speech notes for the 2014 Dorothy Pearce Address, Disability rights in Australia: Where have we been, where are we now and where are we going?, delivered in Hobart on 17 July 2014.
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