Australia’s National Disability Insurance Scheme Minister Stuart Robert has released the government’s response to a major review of the program expected to make disability support scheme easier to navigate.
All 29 recommendations made were supported and the changes will be rolled out over the next six months, pending coronavirus restraints. One of the main changes is providing clarity on what the term “reasonable and necessary” means, as that’s the benchmark for support funded by the NDIS. Another is the introduction of independent assessments to enter the program, paid for by the NDIS.
“Rather than having to get therapy reports and negotiate with planners – which can be quite stressful at times – here independent assessments by world-leading professionals will look at the functional assessment, what function you’ve got,” Mr. Robert told Sky News.
“That of course will give you access and then full flexibility in your plan.”
The assessments gather information about a person’s individual support needs and how their disability impacts daily life.
The minister believes such assessments will lead to a simpler, faster, and fairer approach for determining eligibility for the scheme.
A voluntary pilot of the assessment scheme was stopped in March because of coronavirus.
Another recommendation is to improve online access for the scheme, so people can track decisions being made.
Participants will also have 90 days – up from 28 – to respond to requests for extra information before their application is considered withdrawn.
Legislation underpinning the NDIS will be changed so there’s more flexibility to provide support to children under seven.
Labor’s NDIS spokesman Bill Shorten said the government had been responsible for the scheme for seven years, so should not have needed a review to know that underspending $4.6 billion on it, coupled with an overwhelmed disability watchdog, would result in chaos.
“That said, David Tune did a very good review and we will be watching to see if this government has genuinely decided to suddenly get serious and rapidly reverse seven years of its theft and neglect,” he told AAP.
There are currently 35 NDIS participants and 58 workers who have the virus.
The scheme has more than 400,000 participants, with about 100,000 joining over the past year.
