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Mr River Night
Leading National Disability Sector Advocate
Co-founder at Developing Australian Communities
Public Officer at the National Disability Leadership Organisation
Mr Night is physically located in Brisbane this week and is available to travel.
Mr Night is an adult Living with Disability, a National Disability Sector Advocate, carer, father and outspoken supporter for reform and improvements in the Disability and NDIS sector with a 30+ year career working across Disability, Youth Justice, Guardianship, Child Safety, Education, TAFE, Aged Care, Forensics Disability and Mental Health sectors.
"This week I heard repeated stories from people living with disability, receiving significant funding for 24 hour services due to extreme, complex needs, still unable to contact or talk to any NDIS delegate with any ability to support them in any way, during critical and crisis matters, with waits of over 2 months typical during times they cannot wait”, said Mr Night, National Disability Sector Advocate.
Why are NDIS and Services Australia staff now at risk of increased pressure, abuse and stress at local NDIS offices? I hear daily, people reporting,
1. You can no longer look up and find your local NDIS office phone numbers or emails – Providers and Participants are only able to access the National Call Centre and generic email. The NDIS website gives the Services Australia address only with no number or email.
2. Agency staff refuse to give out their emails and direct contact phone numbers any more
3. Agency communication is now from ‘no reply’ emails as standard even when from individual delegates
4. NDIS calls participants and providers from blocked numbers and if you miss that call about your crisis matter there is no way to return the call to the person as they cannot provide a call back number, the call centre cannot transfer you to them, you cannot email them and you have missed your chance if you were called while using the toilet or showering
5. Participants and providers are not told who their planners are and how to contact them
6. Planning meetings do not appear to occur anymore, even over the phone for many high cost plans
7. Providers cannot contact planners to provide information for plan reviews or ask questions
8. Participants cannot contact planners to ask questions or tell them if they even need funding any more
9. No stakeholders can contact NDIS delegates to discuss anything relating to plan reviews
10. Even when consent forms are provided and participants and nominees ask for their Support Coordinator or Provider to discuss critical matters with NDIS the agency systems does not seem to have capacity to record these consents while some participants are having to resubmit this multiple times in the same month.
11. NDIA complaints staff are too busy to help during crisis with typical experiences reported that complaints staff are not contacting people following complaints about crisis situations for over a month
12. Despite an alleged ‘triage’ service people can contact the call centre daily reporting the same critical situation when participants are at immediate risk and still not receive a response for weeks or months from NDIA/S
13. Even when attending local NDIS offices, front of house staff may not have the skill or experience to help and may then be in the position to support an irate family member, provider or participant who has had enough and reached their breaking point
14. Ministerial staff are too busy to help in a time of crisis also and will typically refer matters back to the complaints team who may get back in touch within a month or two but have little power to action anything
15. Complaints team staff are used as the point of call for issues. Many matters don't require a complaints process but need simple, immediate action by an authorised delegate. The complaints process seems to be little more than something to bide time and try to redirect a very real and critical matter
“We already saw a terrible incident last year when a Services Australia staff member was stabbed in a Centrelink office. I hold very genuine fears we are pushing people beyond breaking point and with this communication blackout I see from NDIS I worry about the pressure this is creating at local NDIS offices.
“I expect more and more people will start going to NDIS offices unannounced, given no systems to make an appointment in the first place, to plead their case or rage in distress given no other option. This is a perfect storm by what appears to be deliberate design or an absence of thought about what it means for Services Australia staff.
"While going and fronting your local NDIS office is an option for those in many areas, if you are in a rural or remote area you essentially cut off completely if you can't get call backs, email contacts or a timely response. That's a terrifying thought.
“The expectation that people will be endlessly patient when facing such critical issues due to agency errors and a lack of communication is plain dangerous.
"I, along with the millions of Australian's living with disability need to hear less about legislation change and what the plans are for reform and basic procedural changes to bring the human back to NDIS fast. None of this requires legislation change.
“Timelines and statistics from the agency sound clear but in reality, I hear too many stories constantly of this not being the case so it really does call to question what's really going on. I have seen many payment enquiries and complaints ‘closed’ when there has still been no resolution. I wonder if this is so their internal statistics look good versus a commitment to resolving critical matters in the real world in a timely way.
“A long-time friend told me today of how their son who receives over $400 000 a year in NDIS funding, had his NDIS plan automatically extended for another 12 month without any communication and when the agency did the extension they made a mistake in the back end of the system which cut off all his services from being able to be paid for months forcing him to contemplate a hospital admission even though he technically had more than $400 000 in funding.
“One might expect that a reasonable person would consider a mistake with over $400 000 in funding that could result in homelessness, services ceasing and forced social work admission to hospital for a person that is perfectly healthy, would warrant a rather prioritised response in any other setting, but not it seems for NDIS who support Australia’s most vulnerable.
“When my friend discovered that NDIS had made a mistake with their ‘automatic extension’ of funds, cutting off established 24 hour services for an extremely vulnerable and high risk young man by mistake, they contacted the NDIS call centre repeatedly with no response for months. They provided consent for their support coordinator and service providers to contact NDIS to escalate the issue and they all had no response or resolution until, after months, the manager of one of their services went to the local NDIS office unannounced, in tears and demanded action. They were lucky to find a team leader present at the time that fixed the 2 month problem in under a day.
“When NDIS makes simple administration mistakes that create the risk of homelessness and forced hospitalisation of healthy participants the only way to escalate and get resolution it seems now is to attend the local office unannounced and demand Service Australia staff take action. This places Services Australia under huge pressure inappropriately and not every can be calm when the life, home and health put at risk due to basic agency administration errors.
“I know many people that worked for NDIS and Service Australia that have been very upfront and explained that you couldn’t pay them enough to ever be put in the situation they were in again, when they have to try to de-escalate people face to face over matters their own colleges and agency have created through simple error and a lack of capacity to spend the time to get it things right.
“When NDIS started, we had face to face meetings for each NDIS plan period. Everyone had the planners name and email to send them information to help the process go smoothly. You could look up the local NDIS office, find the office number call and talk to them and ask for the team leader or planner when something important that was critical occurred. That has all gone now in my experience. I haven’t had the opportunity to see a face-to-face NDIS planning meeting for over 3 years, and we can’t blame it all on COVID.
“Removing the ‘human’ from human services and NDIS and regressing to this faceless system is creating immeasurable stress and pressure for families and participants. I worry that our amazing Services Australia staff are coping the brunt of this and when you mix complex behaviour, trauma, mental illness, family, crisis, and an inability to quickly solve mistakes that impact a person’s life in huge ways it is only a matter of time before we see very serious incidents and more abuse and risk in Service Australia/NDIS local offices.
"NDIS has also removed the buffer they had when Service Providers would often carry the cost and act as the 'bank of NDIS' when the agency made mistakes with funding. Now days we see so many examples where NDIS asks providers to continue supports while they fix their agency errors and then don't pay the invoices for those supports for months. The financial pressure this places providers under, means many just won’t risk it anymore and participants face going to hospital instead when perfectly healthy.
"The only other contacts for people are the Local Area Coordinator (LAC) services which are tendered out, third party organisations that don't have the delegation or power to resolve critical issues.
“The sector respects and knows Services Australia staff work so hard like we all do. We call for everyone to please try to be patient and understand they are doing their best with the systems they have. We ask everyone to remember to direct and express their anger, frustration and overwhelmed feelings in healthy ways, contact counselling services during these times and reach a base line of calm and control before walking into any Services Australia office.
Contact details:
FOR FURTHER COMMENT
M 0401429403
