Understanding the NDIS; Mr Hockey, it’s not that hard…

This morning on ABC Radio National, I was slightly astonished to hear the Shadow Treasurer say that no one understand the NDIS and that none of the details are known. I’m sure that came as a surprise to all the myriad of groups who have taken the time to read the legislation and the rules, and make submissions over the last six months.

I’m sure it was also a surprise to the Parliamentary Library, who have done a briefing note on it, or any of the people involved with the design of the NDIS, now known as DisabilityCare Australia.

The basic structure of the scheme has been public for sometime, but as the 0.5% levy has been announced today, I thought an explainer about what exactly is on the table could be useful.

Over the last year, I’ve been critical of the design of the NDIS and still am. This piece is about what is on the table, rather than what I would actually want disability funding to look like.

Currently, disability services are generally funded with direct block grants to organisations, who then deliver supports. These services have historically been significantly underfunded, so services have been rationed, and eligibility very restricted. Disability support became a lottery – if a disability was acquired, for example, in a car accident (in some states), then the support outcomes were completely different from other accidents.

Families carry a huge amount of the care burden, estimated to be worth billions of dollars a year. Carer groups have advocated strongly for recognition and a change to the way disability support is funded and delivered.

There is some shift in this funding model at the state level, with many moving to an individualised funding model already, in conjunction with the proposed NDIS. How the state and federal issues will play out will be tackled through the launches, but NSW, for one, has committed to a parallel roll out of their new disability support model, alongside the NDIS.

The legislation, that has passed, and the rules that are being worked on now, both lay out the specifics of how the NDIS will work. What’s clear in that, is that many people’s expectations about the scope of the NDIS will not be met.

Ok, let’s get to the details. The NDIS will cover people with a permanent disability, acquired under the age of 65. That disability has to impact on communication, social interaction, learning, mobility, self-care, self-management; and the person’s capacity for social and economic participation. And it must be a lifetime disability.

Once someone is eligible for the NDIS (and for the next three years, this will only be in the launch site areas), then they have to make a plan. This plan is to cover what kind of supports they need, and the rules, in particular, are really specific about what that means. The supports have to directly relate to the disability and not cover any services that are, or should, be covered by other agencies or laws (such as the Disability Discrimination Act.)

For example, for work-related supports, the NDIS will fund supports that are

“related to daily living that a person would require irrespective of whether they are working or looking for work (including personal care and support to be ready for work). The NDIS may also be responsible for the costs of transport to and from work which are over and above those which would be payable by a person without disability.”

But not:

“work-specific support to people with disability related to recruitment processes, work arrangements or the working environment where these are required as reasonable adjustments under Commonwealth, State or Territory anti-discrimination legislation, including workplace modifications, work-specific aids and equipment, and transport between work activities.”
(From the draft Rules – Support for participants)

The plan will then go to the Agency (the department that will run the NDIS) for approval. If needed, the person applying for the plan can have a nominee designated, who will administer the plan. There are lots of rules about who can be a nominee and what they will need to do.

Once the plan is approved, the person with the disability can go and source the supports they need. This is where things get a little tricky. If the person, or their nominee, is administering their own plan, the only restriction they have on where the supports come from is that they have a bank account and an ABN. For those that have the Agency run their plan, they have to use registered providers of supports, who have to jump through a whole lot more hoops than that.

Some in the disability sector are raising concerns about what this will mean, while the campaign to support the NDIS sees no problem with a system where “for the first time people with disabilities and their families will become a large, informed consumer market able to pay for a variety of reasonably-priced goods and services to support their lives.”

Already, community groups are looking at ways to learn to market themselves in this brave, new world of disability funding and a wide range of projects are going on, funding by the Federal Government, looking at how to get ready.

From July 1 this year, the NDIS will start in launch sites in NSW, Victoria, Tasmania, South Australia. The ACT will join in from 2014 and the NT in 2017. In the first lot of launches, only NSW and Victoria will host the full scheme, with Tasmania and SA focused on children and young people.

In NSW, people living in the Newcastle local government area, and living at the Stockton Large Residential Centre will start on the NDIS from this year, with those in the Lake Macquarie and Maitland areas following in subsequent years.

Groups in the area have been meeting up to discuss the change and how it will work. The NSW State Government has awarded the contract for local coordinators (who will work across both the state and federal programs) to St Vincent de Paul. This week, an expo is being held with most local disability groups attending. The local transition agency has outlined here how they think the scheme will work.

The same things are happening in Geelong, where they are also pushing to host the head office of the NDIS.

The point of these launch sites is to test out the way the NDIS is structured, including the rules, and see what further refinements are needed. They are also a chance for people with disability and disability support organisations to get used to a different way of getting and delivering services. The full scheme is not to be rolled out until 2018.

So, I call bullshit on the idea that there are no details available about the scheme. Whether it will meet the huge expectations that have been built up around what it will deliver, is a whole other story.

Please drop any questions into the comments, and I’ll do my best to answer them.

I am not a widget: privatisation of social services

With Tony Abbott’s committment this week to implement the IPA’s policies, it is perhaps timely to have a little look at what that could mean for the care sector. Luckily, both here and overseas, there are an increasing amount of examples of what this brave, new world of market-driven social services looks like.

I’ve been watching the recent changes to the care sector in the UK with an increasing level of alarm over the past few years. From the Big Society, to social workers morphing into social entrepreneurs, the essential services of government are being sold off, bit by bit.

Large corporates, already well established in the employment sector, are moving in to social services with predictably disastrous results. The rationale behind all this is that governments are inefficient, and the market can deliver better services for a lower price. There is NO evidence at all that this is true, but it is a mantra repeated ad nauseum by a variety of right-wing think tanks.

Rights for women, children, people with disabilities, older people, indigenous people, migrants – well, basically anyone who was not a property holding, white bloke – were fought for by successive generations of activists. Just as unions fought for basic working conditions, the first social workers fought for the basics of the welfare state system.

“These workers responded to local issues whether it was poverty, lack of health or education, workers’ rights or the rights of women and children.”

This system of protection is under significant attack. I’ve written before about how the NDIS fits neatly into a privatised, individualised form of disability support. In NSW, the LNP Government is trialling so-called social bonds, with the expectation that one day they will be a tradable commodity, like other bonds. Because people are just the same as widgets, after all.

The IPA, helpfully, has laid out their plans for reform of mental health and disability services here.

“We must now begin to argue that individual and family choice and a reduced role for government should extend beyond the realms of economic management and into social policy in Australia.”

As usual, when it comes to policy, none of this is particularly new. The previous LNP Government started this process off with the dismantling of the CES and the introduction of the horribly complex Job Network (now Job Services Australia), that is now dominated by a few large players. The Parliamentary Library looked at the issues in 1998, summarised here and this paper from 1993 teases out some of the key concerns.

What has changed is the emergence of giant corporate players, such as Serco and G4S. This fundamentally shifts the power balance in favour of the market and reduces the care sector to just another business.

“An overarching risk of privatisation is that the transfer of businesses to the private sector could be accompanied by fundamental changes in services since the public sector ethos of providing a service to the public may be replaced by the motivation of the private firm to make a profit.” (From here.)

In the UK, groups have come together to oppose the wholesale privatisation of government services. This is more than just opposition though; this is about stopping the wholesale handover of core government responsibilities to the brutality of the market.

You can bet that any contracts an Abbott Government signs with these big corporates will end up commercial in confidence; hidden from the scrutiny that now applies to the non-government sector or to government itself through the budget process.

I don’t want the essential services of government, hard-fought for by women over the last century, sold off so large corporates can make money. The reason they fought so hard was because the market had failed and impacts on women and children, particularly, were harsh.

Time for a bit more light on this aspect of the LNP policy handbook, I think.