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MR RIVER NIGHT
Leading National Disability, Child Safety and Community Sector Advocate, Professional and Speaker
Co-founder at Developing Australian Communities
Public Officer at the National Disability Leadership Organisation
Mr Night is physically located in Brisbane this week and can travel interstate if needed.
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.
Personal Opinion Piece
“With an election so close and what appears looking in, to be a disastrous and inexplicable lack of action to fix the workings of NDIS, how individual and community services can be funded and delivered to work smart rather than hard, we all wonder who we will vote for”, said Mr Night today.
Right now, I would like to see an Elon Musk DOGE style brush fire through the agency that does not need more focus on legalisation but needs sweeping, urgent design basics rebuilt, like people’s lives depend on it, because they do. I’d be happy to take that role on and it may be the only thing that gets this right.
“After years spent on a Royal Commission showing Australia the extent of violence, abuse, neglect and exploitation of people living with disability, we see next to no action on an overwhelming majority of its recommendations, or even endorsement.
“If the average Australian isn’t motivated to demand change due their human care for our most vulnerable, then the 50 + billion dollars a year negative impact on our economy, on top of the cost of NDIS should get people to demand action today.
“We have promises that of course ‘codesign’ will be done to ensure the bureaucrats have expert advice when fixing things. But if every advocacy group, providers, individual sector leaders like me have no clue what is going on until we receive announcements of immediate changes, I suspect what they think the word ‘codesign’ means is very different to what it actually means.
“I am not calling for more funding for the NDIS and Disability space. What I am calling for is urgent redesign of how we fund individuals and community services to work smart instead of hard, and a refit of agency procedures that are creating bottle necks and costing taxpayers millions.
“In Australia we currently fund Disability Servies almost exclusively in the most expensive and ineffective ways by a system that can’t do the basics of case management and funding decision making consistently.
“We rolled out a new Federal program with NDIS and at the same time gutted foundational services and organisations that buffered the previous inefficiencies and chronic, systemic failings while also gutting the sectors safeguards.
“The agency designed a system that has removed the human from human services from my perspective.
“Now NDIS rely almost exclusively on faceless planning meetings, backed up by reports that planners ‘don’t have time to read’, with zero contact locally with NDIS delegates.
"At a time of huge upheaval, worry and distress in our sector, NDIS has chosen to step back from attending some of Australia's biggest disability and NDIS related community events when they should be there reasuring us and explaining what they are doing.
“We see limited authentic engagement with the providers involved in planning reviews and process, a lack of front line, face to face checks and balances by the agency to see if the funds are even needed, being used properly or adequately and no case management with local knowledge to get people off NDIS wherever possible.
“We have local NDIS offices, but we can’t call and talk to a local NDIS delegate or have their email to save time and ensure quick fixes don’t become major headaches stretching on for months instead of minutes.
“Services Australia staff now have to face extremely disgruntled people front up to their doorsteps and demanding action.
“Great local providers are going under because a 40+ billion dollar a year Agency can’t process invoices sometimes for 6 months or more. This is a basic accounting and organisational design crisis.
“When NDIA or the Commission does call people back weeks after they raise a complaint or ask to speak to someone, it is often someone with no delegation authority, who does little more than read from the website.
“NDIS calls always seems to come to me when I am on the toilet or in the shower. Of course, you cannot call back because delegates wont give you their number as a rule.
“We now see attacks on Support Coordinators and Plan Managers. These roles are the last saving line of defence to help participants navigate and exercise choice, control and escalate matters to the agency when they yet again send a person to hospital for no other reason than the NDIS Delegate forgot to set up the funding properly in the portal. Should we let the agency escalate and navigate itself with trust instead?
“The NDIS roll out has seen the removal and kneecap of basic, front-line safeguards, defunding organisations that at least helped to buffer agency mismanagement and mistakes, moved from face to face to arm’s length and depersonalised planning processes for packages worth hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.
“We now have next to no due diligence and when given a detailed manual for fixes by a massive Royal Commission and NDIS review, we still see a head in the sand approach and little action.
“The cost of inaction is tens of billions of dollars to the Australian Economy on top of the cost of NDIS.
“The NDIS is a house needing a full gutting and rebuild. Oh, and people are suffering, lives are being lost and irreparably damaged, generationally, if money alone doesn’t motivate voters.
“The Disability Sector is not just over 4.4 million Australian’s who many are voters. It also extends to their families, friends, professionals, providers and the rest of Australia that need to hear the voice of our elected representatives before the upcoming election outlining exactly what they are doing to fix this mess.
“I do not want to hear more talk of legislation, cuts and the small number of rorters you have created an opportunity for, because of your deliberate design and the way case management by the agency has been corrupted, seeing how poorly NDIS does business.
“If our elected leaders are shying away from the hot potato topic of NDIS because the political advisors have told them to keep it ‘hush, hush’ in case it harms their campaign, then let this be a wake-up call, that your silence is deafening and like the Qld State Election people’s views and votes change.
“What is great right now is providers, participants and almost any one of the thousands of participants and providers I talk to around Australia that work with NDIS and the sector and Australians in general, are all on the same page.
“NDIS must be fixed and rapidly. The commitment is there without question from our sector. What seems to be missing right now is a willingness and perhaps some people qualified and unafraid to take the action needed.
“I for one, like many in the Disability Sector would love the opportunity to be the ‘bad guy’ and make the required, drastic and lifesaving changes needed in the agency DODGE style if no one else is up for it.
“We must introduce the following changes immediately to nip rorting in the bud, bring back good decision making to save time and money and address this overspend and economic drain
- Every NDIS planning meeting each year for participants must only be done by a qualified and experienced professional and NDIS delegate face to face, with the participant in the room with supporters of their choice and every, single provider that they engage. The only exception will be when directed by the participant
- Common sense to replace the excessive expenditure on meaningless paper pushing, such as, requesting assessments and reports that take months and cost thousands to reconfirm the participants established, life-long, permanent disability is still, life long and permanent.
- Immediately reintroduce state, statutory, agency led Community Visitors to visit every single group home and participant living with intellectual disability, monthly until the system gets back on track
- Ensure a clear MOU is established for direct and timely escalation to NDIS for rapid response by Community Visitors with powers
- A “local planner for locals” policy so that only local professionals are able to conduct NDIS planning meetings and the provision of local, direct contact details for planners as mandatory
- Every NDIS office is to engage, facilitate and support establishing a local disability advisory group meeting monthly, made up of people with disability, advocacy groups and related agencies to identify needs in the community and create strategic planning to inform funding priorities, advise on practice and the continual quality improvement of NDIS staff and procedures
- Redirect the wasted millions spent on ‘advisors', refund advocacy services for individual advocacy and introduce a policy that every single NDIS plan is audited and reviewed by an independent advocate
- Reinstitute local planning for disability services and community services capacity building so that group programs, respite, allied health and recovery programs and service providers can be funded as a service to meet community need for greater ‘bang for buck’, instead of exclusive reliance on individual NDIS funding
- Establish immediate MOU’s and binding agreements that mandate communication and coordination between departments, such as, Health, Child Safety, Disability, Justice, Communities, Education and NDIS
- Where a participant has multiple Government departments involved in their case there must be a mandated requirement that all those departments are represented and present at planning meetings, to ensure collaboration, reduce double ups, identify cost saving and capacity to work proactively and reduce the impact on emergency services when unnecessary
- Every NDIS plan must have a clear section devoted to future planning, goals, and actions that providers are held accountable to
- Every NDIS plan must have a clear section devoted to identifying foundational supports, community services, in kind, informal and non-NDIS funded supports and stakeholder that can be engaged to reduce the over reliance on NDIS
- Localise plan approvals and invoice processing
- Decisions are based on the recommendations of qualified, allied health staff who are the registered, professional and qualified experts. Ditch the push to tick and flick internal assessments by admin staff. "Computer Says Nooo" is just not good enough
“For many of us the fixes for NDIS and those subjected to violence, abuse, neglect and exploitation can’t wait another day. We can’t wait another day.
Key Facts:
Mr Night on linkedIn (7) Mr River Night | LinkedIn
Mr Night on Facebook (14) Facebook
About us:
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.
Contact details:
M 0401429403
media@dacexpo.com.au
