The NDIS eligibility age has been raised from 7 to 9 years, while the foundational supports for them have been delayed. Advocates fear the kids are the ones who will miss out.
Disability advocates are worried that with the delay of foundational supports will mean kids who need crucial early intervention are going to fall through the cracks.
It was announced over the weekend that the NDIS eligibility age has increased from 7 to 9 years, with the NDIA confirming yesterday that the early childhood approach now covers children up to 9 years old.
In an interview on Friday, federal disability and NDIS minister Mark Butler said state health ministers had been working to find ways of supporting children outside the NDIS.
“Also involved in this area is the commitment to so-called foundational supports as part of a disability reform agenda. That’s not only going to look at kids under the age of 9 with more mild to moderate developmental delay issues but, in the longer term, we’ll look at this group who just aren’t getting the psychosocial support that they need outside of the NDIS,” he told the ABC.
People with Disability Australia are concerned, writing in a LinkedIn post yesterday:
“This weekend, Minister for Disability and the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) Mark Butler announced that the NDIS eligibility age has been increased from under 7 to under 9. Children with “more mild to moderate developmental delays” will rely on state-run ‘Foundational Supports’ until they turn 9,” they said.
“This announcement comes shortly after they announced a delay to the roll out of the foundational support system.
“While the federal government has pledged $700 million to bolster youth mental health services, the rollout of these foundational supports is still pending.
“We urge government to ensure that no child falls through the cracks during this transition. Every child deserves timely and adequate support.”
Disability advocate River Knight said it was understandable that families were scared.
“They’ve already made the announcement that they’re going to move the criteria for young people accessing the scheme from seven to nine. They’ve said, but we won’t do it for everyone right now. But the reality is, once they’ve made an announcement, it happens,” he said.
“Thousands of young people around Australia have received letters from NDIS to say we are reviewing your access to the scheme, and you have a month to prove that you should still receive NDIS funding, which traumatised many families.”
The NDIS has now extended the time to respond beyond four weeks, however Mr Knight said even that was impossible.
“Getting an appointment with a speech pathologist or an OT, getting them seen and getting a report in under four weeks is almost impossible,” he said.
“They’ve announced that they’re not going to fund people for things that they think should be done through foundational supports. But then they’ve also said, oh, but we haven’t actually worked out the foundational support system yet, but trust us when we say that we won’t act straight away.”
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Mr Knight said he was concerned that because the foundational supports negotiation was being held hostage by the state’s hospital funding agreement, whatever was created would be rushed through and not fix what was broken.
“There’s a pressure being put on the system to say, we’re just going to have to come up with something really quickly that may actually not be fit for purpose for this cohort, because otherwise it’s going to jeopardise our hospital funding and it’s going to delay the hospital funding agreement,” he said.
“We all support our leaders in codesign and change to fix NDIS, foundational systems and work smart instead of hard. But to make announcements that decisions are made, with no detail, no plan, no criteria, no agreement with states, no concrete transition plan and no sector plan, means no action and no options. Get real Australia.”
In order to support people properly, there needed to be interagency collaboration between state and federal departments, Mr Knight said.
“How education is going to support young people with disability, how housing is going to support it, how health, how community services, how police and forensics are going to work together, how child safety is going to work together,” he said.
State-based interdepartmental planning was needed to develop an action plan of how the foundational supports program was going to work, he said.
“So we can then go to NDIS and look at, where’s the overlap, what can be done at a state level, so that NDIS doesn’t have to do it? How NDIS is going to collaborate and step up and step down?” Mr Knight told Health Services Daily.
“So if someone’s so disabled that they must have NDIS funding, how do we work out then, at what point they have the capacity to step down away from NDIS and then just rely on foundational services. And how do we work out when people are being supported by foundational services, when they need to step up to NDIS funding?”
He said the problem was that no one knew what was happening and who to turn to, to get answers.
“The sector in general saying, I don’t even know how to advocate systemically for this, because I don’t even know what department and what agency is going to now be responsible,” he said.
“This is the problem that they scare the sector and scare mums and dads who have got a young person with a disability and people who are living at home whose life depends on their services by making announcements with no detail. And we just want people to get real.”