I expect better, as a manager, taxpayer, and disabled person using this system.
I got my new NDIS plan the other day in the mail. I’m not going to talk about the content here, that is for another time, but there are a number of things that disturbed me about this plan that I’d like to share.
The document itself
If an organisation I was responsible for had called that a final document and sent it out into the world, I would be ashamed and embarrassed and we’d have a chat about lessons learned and what we could do better next time.
‘Legal’ document?
The document is a conglomeration of cut and paste, sometimes referencing earlier plans, mostly not.
There are bits of it that seem invented, by whom I can’t imagine. It has sections in it that contradict other sections so overall it doesn’t make a lot of sense.
This is a government document (think letter from the tax office, reminder from social security, Medicare notice) and yet it is nothing like the standard you would expect from a government entity, particularly given they are viewed as legal documents.
Also in today’s edition:
- Health business lifts its owners into top 10 of Rich List
- RACP transition of power mostly peaceful, but at what cost?
- Australia not prepared for synthetic opioid threat, inquiry told
- Hospitals adopting AI faster than they can govern it, report warns
- Home aged care users triple in eight years
- Flu deaths nearly double as covid mortality plunges, ABS data show
- What gets lost when therapy moves online?
Hard copy
It arrived as a hard copy. Most government entities now email or send via MyGov.
I have asked repeatedly not to send me hard copy, and they say they won’t, but they keep doing it. In hard copy the dodgy nature of the document was even more pronounced.
‘My strengths’
There are elements in an NDIS plan these days that have no relationship to anything. I suspect they are there to keep us disabled people busy doing something that isn’t bothering government with our opinions.
One new section is called “My strengths” as though I am 12 and need broader encouragement.
Perhaps it is about building my confidence; I would achieve so much more if I just understood what I’m good at and tried harder.
Memo to the Agency: I suspect there are many in this world who would be terrified of what Christina might do if she had more confidence and achieved more. Just saying.
The strengths mean nothing in the grander scheme of things and bear no relationship to the supports I require. So I said: “an astonishing ability to withstand exceptional amounts of ableist bullshit.”
I don’t take well to being patronised.
Related
What it says
Finally, this document speaks to me as someone who runs organisations and has operated at executive management level for a couple of decades.
It tells me that the culture inside the NDIS is chaotic and random. That individual staff members are not properly oriented into their roles, and that they are operating by the seat of their pants as best they can.
This kind of chaos comes with constant looping back, fixing, double checking, covering, retrospective training. It is wasteful and takes valuable time and energy that most organisations (or people) don’t have to waste.
Shall we have another conversation about where savings might come from?
This is not good enough and disabled people are being asked to pay the price of poor management. I expect better, as a manager, taxpayer, and disabled person using this system.
Christina Ryan is CEO and founder of the Disability Leadership Institute, an external advisory panel member for the Diversity Council Australia, and an advisory board member at Polaris Lawyers Australia.
This article was first published on Ms Ryan’s LinkedIn feed. Read the original article here.