Possibility of reform without education and consultation?

Can reform happen without an education process?

In short that is what the current federal government is hoping to achieve with the National Disability Insurance Scheme or NDIS. Despite what is popularly believed, the NDIS is more than a change in the way support needs for people living with disability and their families is funded.

True! Currently from July 2014, the NDIS will be gradually rolled out across Australia, and will cover all Australians living with a significant permanent (life-long) disability by July 1019. It is hoped that the introduction of the NDIS, will end the current unjust way funding is distributed.

It is also hoped the there will be greater access to services and the type of services people living with significant disabilities and their families can access regardless of where they live in Australian.  The NDIS has been promoted as ‘giving greater choice’ to people living with disabilities and their families. However, it is also predicted that the NDIS will provide a more competitive environment in the disability sector, creating a ‘market place’ environment. We know with competition there is also the threat of monopolization of the market place, as is the case with the two supermarket giants in this country. 

Monopolization in a particular corner of any given market, may in fact lead to a reduction of choice and this is something disability advocates need to be on guard about, as it threatens the core value or choice on which the National Disability Insurance Scheme was founded.

This is because the NDIS is not a funding reform. It is far more ranging in its scope than a change in the funding agreements between the federal and state governments, that see the federal government through an increase in the Medicare levy, fund disability care for the first time.

This is the first important myth for us to comprehend as we look towards the introduction of the NDIS.  This reform in not about funding!  While there will be an increase in funding available to those who need it and an increase in the number of people ‘eligible’ for direct support services, therapies and equipment needs, this is not the core of the NDIS. Yet in terms of the public education and information released I have seen so far, much of it has been around funding, changes to eligibility, changes to the way people are asses when applying, facts & figures around numbers and amount and debate of its costings and whether the Australian economy can afford it or afford not to induce it.

If the NDIS is not a funding reform, what is it? Essentially, as I understand it the NDIS is about social reform.

It is a major shift in the way we value people with a disability in this country. By acknowaging that people living with disabilities, their families and full-time carers live in poverty while they struggle to paid for medical expenses, early intervention therapies that can increase the quality of life the children or loved one who becomes disable can enjoy. It is about people with a disability and their families joining the social fabric for what makes Australia a great place to live.

The NDIS reform needs to remain a fundamentally a reform on how we view people with disability in this country.  The NDIS is about equality for all people living with a disability, their families and those who care for them. Until those standards are reached nationwide the work of NDIS campaigners with not be completed.

Funding reform and moving people to be funded under the National Disability Insurance Scheme and giving them dignity of choice for the first time is only half the battle.  Dignity of choice and direction over their own lives can only be achieved if ‘real’ choice is available and all activities available to other Australians are accessible to those living with disabilities and those who care for them. In essence the NDIS promises to provide real choices for real people!

This reform for the first time recognises the rights of those living with disabilities have the right to a choice in lifestyles that is consistent with every other Australian. This is the message that I think has been lost as we discuss and debate the economic value in the change for funding arrangements for the lifetime support needs of someone living with a disability.

In real terms the NDIS is looking at things like access to the education sector via providing specialized education support; access to a range of different therapies support not just what is popular of cheapest, we want to see an end to standard service and a choice in the market to open up; A choice is mobility aids and communication devices that increase the person’s ability to access and communicate in the community; physical, social and psychological access to the community in which a person living with a disability is a key player in the ability to deliver the NDIS reforms; access to employment and accommodation choices, being able to eat as a family at a restaurants and access holiday accommodations and destinations without needing to worry about access issues.

It is the change is the way we as society view access issues that pose and major threat to the NDIS reform process, where no longer worried about the legal access requirements for new buildings. Our biggest hurls in terms of access, is changing the attitudes of everyday Australians towards people living with disabilities and their families.   

While the tokenism attitude still occurs (like disable access toilets being used as storerooms, ramps with incorrect gradients, signs without brail or voice information, abstance  for captions for chimera goes, token ‘disabled’ employees and a inaccessible public transport system for people with disability) the type of social  inclusion that the NDIS reform aims to embody is still unattainable. I don’t think Australians comprehends the type of sweeping reforms that should  result  due to the NDIS, nor do I think we have the combine attitude to accept all people with disabilities as equal members of society.

We it comes to people living with disabilities, who they are; what they look like and especially what they are capable of achieving, I think we all fail in our correct assessments.  I am proven wrong everyday by the young people I work with.  They learn and comprehend things I think we not possible.  Traditionally thinking of what people with disabilities particular those with high intellectual process challenges are very limiting. For the NDIS to work our personal concepts of what is possible needs to explode!  I say that as an industry insider.  How much more will the general public struggle with the social reform that is the NDIS.

If you believe the government that the delivery of NDIS reform has began you do your maths and quick realised the focus is solely on the funding reform.   Funding alone can’t produce social change. We have seen it with smoking and drinking, Increase through taxes incurring prices rises do not work alone.  With finical reform needs to be public education to challenge along held misconceptions like it’s ok to drink while pregnant.

So how does the government think it can bring in major reform regarding the rights and choices of people with disabilities without any major advertisement on its reform processes?  Removing someone from the disability support pension and providing them with free taxies to get to work does not address, inequality in the workplace, the historical under employment of people with disabilities, the fact the many work places are physically inaccessible, yet alone the need to address what disability actual is!

Simple basic facts like people with intellectual disabilities can have a basic conversation to enable them to tell you how they want the hair cut.  The majority of them are able to have a conversation way beyond that complexity.  What amazes me is this perception is if a person is non verbal the do not functioning intellectually so there is no point talking to a non-verbal person and thus it becomes its acceptable to treat them as a non human being.

If retail staff, don’t want to talk to me, then how does the government expect me to go to a job interview, let alone be employed with uncontrollable seizures.  I can’t help but question some of the social reforms that are targeted by the NDIS and employment targets and thus the premise on which the National Disabilities Insurance Scheme is costs on is comprised.

Real reform for real people such as the NDIS needs education and disabilities awareness to be addressed.  Anything else denies people living with disabilities true equality.