In my post on Feb I shared my journey home. It was my story to crave out my own interdependent life style in the community. At 44 I have live independently in my own home for 15 years, but only recently the Queensland Disability Services began to contribute to my support costs. Despite the NDIS being one of the most vocal political campaigns in our history. Many people in the community just don't get it.
They fail to understand the crisis point the current disability system finds it self in. It's twenty years since the Disability Act was introduced and yet people with disabilities, their families and carers still fight for the ame thing the Act was designed to bring, Inclusion is the community. Not more welfare!
I fear a lost of monument if there is a change of government in September, and if opinion polls are right Tony Abbott will be that next Prime Minster of Australia. The question in Every Australian Counts Supporter's heart is will Tony Abbott support a 2018 start up of the National Disability Insurance Scheme?
Talk on the street tells me there are divided views on the NDIS, What is function will be? and Who will be eligible for support? Let me assure you the word 'insurance' is misleading. NO ONE WITH A DISABILITY OF THEIR FAMILY MEMBERS will receive a payment or payout. The money with be paid directly to a service or equipment provider, in the same way medicare pays you GP or specialist.
NDIS is a hand-up not a hand-out! Despite the common belief in the community not everyone who receives Disability Support Pension will be eligible for the NDIS. Only those who need support to improve daily function or support to live in community will be eligible.
The NDIS unlike any other scheme before it will be drive by goals which people with a disability and/or their family want to achieve. If I could summarize the goal of the NDIS in two words it would be COMMUNITY PARTICIPATION.
For decades members of the community who either have a disability or a family member with a disability have experienced social isolation and exclusion due to lack of eligibility or lack of funding. The first thing the NDIS aims to do is to give everyone with a disability the same starting point. The current start points vary with age, type of disability, the way you acquire the disability and what state you live in. So NDIS creates a level field of eligibility. Not every disability is caused by accident or medical malparactise.
Why should a parent of a child with Down Syndrome or an adult who develops MS not be initial to the same medical support and mobility equipment because there's no one to sue as being responsible for their disability? Why should the tax payer supplement someone who has an accident at work income and not support some one who experiences organ failure because they were born with diabetes?
Many parents of children with a disability or spouses who's spouse has acquired a disability disable and need full-time care who relishes the opportunity to gain employment if respite can was available for family member. The NDIS is far from just another group of people in the community getting government assistance. Finally the Labour Government has realized a system based on hand-outs creates a sense on 'entitlement' in some individuals. NDIS is design to allow people to access education; to access treatments; to access equipment; to access communication; to access employment and finally access the community like every other Australian.
We simply want to see an end to situations where 30 year olds are living in nursing homes and both parents with children born with profound disabilities like cerebral palsy are unable to work full time because of the level of care these child needs. Or a 15 year old boy dropping out of high school because his parents can't afford a new wheelchair not his teachers carry around school.
NDIS both creates jobs and will enable people to come off welfare and enter the work force for the first time. The question is can Australia with our aging population afford not to introduce the NDIS. Unlike any system that supports people with disabilities before is hopes that the NDIS will not be based on what people can't do, rather their goals.
Parent's of a child born with a profound hearing, may elect the goal of sending the child to a mainstream school in order for this child to achieve this goal, he or she will need to be able to communicate with the teacher. The child needs some ability to hear in order to learn to talk. The solution for that family may be for the government to fund a chociler ear implant. Combined with an appropriate early intervention program and some support in the first years of school that child may go on to live a full productive life without need any further assistance from the NDIS.
We need to stop looking a what the introduction of NDIS costs to start up and start to learn and understand that NDIS is much more than the money the tax payer will layout. The introduction of the NDIS will assist some people born with disabilities to live more productive lives; it will give people who acquire disabilities a better chance of great rehabilition outcomes, It will allow parents of kids with high support needs to access respite and improve family quality of life; it will allow some carers to go back to work in some capasity; it will provide age appropriated medical equipment taking finical strain off families; it will improve the health and well being of families and aging carers; it will provide security for people with significant disabilities as they age; it will give young people with 24hr support needs an alternative to age aged filicaties. It will enable people to access education, treatments, early intervention programs, rehabilition, medical, communication and mobility equipment; respite care to assist carers, more suitable accommodation and housing options and entry into the workforce.
In December, I spoke with the senator of Aging and disability, She freely admits that discrimination is the workforce is one of the greatest barriers to people with disabilities. The biggest lie the voters have been feed is people with disabilities can not work and don't want to work. While that make be true for a small percentage of this group it is not then norm.
Despite a multiple barriers existing for people with disabilities in the workforce, studies show that employees with disabilities take less sick days and have fewer workplace accidents. Economically the employment of people with disabilities makes good sense. A sentiment reinforced by Productivity Commission , if you really want to know the findings you can download them here, rather than rely on inadequacy of media reports.
I freely admit when I first heard noises about the NDIS I was skeptical, here was yet another reform to the disability sector only this time it would be the Federal Government stuffing it up and politics getting in the way. However as I read, learn, question and engage I understand more about the ideals of the NDIS that underpin its legislation, the way it is designed to allow our individual goals to drive the support we will receive, and its economic foundations, the bigger fan I become.
As I meet people and listen to their stories and cries of decades of frustration, as the ground supports retell the victories and defeats, as we ride the highs and lows of the debate, the message of hope rings through. Talk longer enough to an opponent of the NDIS and I realize much of there opposition is based on two things: 1) Distrust of governments to get the balance right and 2) little or no understanding of the legislation and how it address the numerous potholes in the various current systems operating around Australia.
Like many supports of the NDIS I don't want to see so much research and consultation go pare shaped at the eleventh hour. We owe it to all Australians to hold governments present and to come to deliver the NDIS as proposed and costed by the Productivity Commission in full. We can only do that if we continue to equip ourselves and others in the community.
Just as I have been able to make my journey home and establish my independence, I want to help other people with a disabilities make their journey home to. .
They fail to understand the crisis point the current disability system finds it self in. It's twenty years since the Disability Act was introduced and yet people with disabilities, their families and carers still fight for the ame thing the Act was designed to bring, Inclusion is the community. Not more welfare!
I fear a lost of monument if there is a change of government in September, and if opinion polls are right Tony Abbott will be that next Prime Minster of Australia. The question in Every Australian Counts Supporter's heart is will Tony Abbott support a 2018 start up of the National Disability Insurance Scheme?
Talk on the street tells me there are divided views on the NDIS, What is function will be? and Who will be eligible for support? Let me assure you the word 'insurance' is misleading. NO ONE WITH A DISABILITY OF THEIR FAMILY MEMBERS will receive a payment or payout. The money with be paid directly to a service or equipment provider, in the same way medicare pays you GP or specialist.
NDIS is a hand-up not a hand-out! Despite the common belief in the community not everyone who receives Disability Support Pension will be eligible for the NDIS. Only those who need support to improve daily function or support to live in community will be eligible.
The NDIS unlike any other scheme before it will be drive by goals which people with a disability and/or their family want to achieve. If I could summarize the goal of the NDIS in two words it would be COMMUNITY PARTICIPATION.
For decades members of the community who either have a disability or a family member with a disability have experienced social isolation and exclusion due to lack of eligibility or lack of funding. The first thing the NDIS aims to do is to give everyone with a disability the same starting point. The current start points vary with age, type of disability, the way you acquire the disability and what state you live in. So NDIS creates a level field of eligibility. Not every disability is caused by accident or medical malparactise.
Why should a parent of a child with Down Syndrome or an adult who develops MS not be initial to the same medical support and mobility equipment because there's no one to sue as being responsible for their disability? Why should the tax payer supplement someone who has an accident at work income and not support some one who experiences organ failure because they were born with diabetes?
Many parents of children with a disability or spouses who's spouse has acquired a disability disable and need full-time care who relishes the opportunity to gain employment if respite can was available for family member. The NDIS is far from just another group of people in the community getting government assistance. Finally the Labour Government has realized a system based on hand-outs creates a sense on 'entitlement' in some individuals. NDIS is design to allow people to access education; to access treatments; to access equipment; to access communication; to access employment and finally access the community like every other Australian.
We simply want to see an end to situations where 30 year olds are living in nursing homes and both parents with children born with profound disabilities like cerebral palsy are unable to work full time because of the level of care these child needs. Or a 15 year old boy dropping out of high school because his parents can't afford a new wheelchair not his teachers carry around school.
NDIS both creates jobs and will enable people to come off welfare and enter the work force for the first time. The question is can Australia with our aging population afford not to introduce the NDIS. Unlike any system that supports people with disabilities before is hopes that the NDIS will not be based on what people can't do, rather their goals.
Parent's of a child born with a profound hearing, may elect the goal of sending the child to a mainstream school in order for this child to achieve this goal, he or she will need to be able to communicate with the teacher. The child needs some ability to hear in order to learn to talk. The solution for that family may be for the government to fund a chociler ear implant. Combined with an appropriate early intervention program and some support in the first years of school that child may go on to live a full productive life without need any further assistance from the NDIS.
We need to stop looking a what the introduction of NDIS costs to start up and start to learn and understand that NDIS is much more than the money the tax payer will layout. The introduction of the NDIS will assist some people born with disabilities to live more productive lives; it will give people who acquire disabilities a better chance of great rehabilition outcomes, It will allow parents of kids with high support needs to access respite and improve family quality of life; it will allow some carers to go back to work in some capasity; it will provide age appropriated medical equipment taking finical strain off families; it will improve the health and well being of families and aging carers; it will provide security for people with significant disabilities as they age; it will give young people with 24hr support needs an alternative to age aged filicaties. It will enable people to access education, treatments, early intervention programs, rehabilition, medical, communication and mobility equipment; respite care to assist carers, more suitable accommodation and housing options and entry into the workforce.
In December, I spoke with the senator of Aging and disability, She freely admits that discrimination is the workforce is one of the greatest barriers to people with disabilities. The biggest lie the voters have been feed is people with disabilities can not work and don't want to work. While that make be true for a small percentage of this group it is not then norm.
Despite a multiple barriers existing for people with disabilities in the workforce, studies show that employees with disabilities take less sick days and have fewer workplace accidents. Economically the employment of people with disabilities makes good sense. A sentiment reinforced by Productivity Commission , if you really want to know the findings you can download them here, rather than rely on inadequacy of media reports.
I freely admit when I first heard noises about the NDIS I was skeptical, here was yet another reform to the disability sector only this time it would be the Federal Government stuffing it up and politics getting in the way. However as I read, learn, question and engage I understand more about the ideals of the NDIS that underpin its legislation, the way it is designed to allow our individual goals to drive the support we will receive, and its economic foundations, the bigger fan I become.
As I meet people and listen to their stories and cries of decades of frustration, as the ground supports retell the victories and defeats, as we ride the highs and lows of the debate, the message of hope rings through. Talk longer enough to an opponent of the NDIS and I realize much of there opposition is based on two things: 1) Distrust of governments to get the balance right and 2) little or no understanding of the legislation and how it address the numerous potholes in the various current systems operating around Australia.
Like many supports of the NDIS I don't want to see so much research and consultation go pare shaped at the eleventh hour. We owe it to all Australians to hold governments present and to come to deliver the NDIS as proposed and costed by the Productivity Commission in full. We can only do that if we continue to equip ourselves and others in the community.
Just as I have been able to make my journey home and establish my independence, I want to help other people with a disabilities make their journey home to. .
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