Ndis needs to be accessible to every single Australian with a disability. There needs to be an easier path for families with young children living with disability. A diagnosis of a disability that’s life long shouldn’t require years of internal reviews of carefully precisely worded answers by a paediatrician that costs several hundred dollars per visit. The years of therapy support lost for my child has caused permanent damage to my family I can’t recover.
Families should also not have to go through a ndis provider such as brotherhood of st Lawrence and re discuss all their child’s “impairments” over and over to a service provider trying to gain access.
Actual inclusion for everyone. Awareness, targeted educational promotion for equal opportunity for everyone by providing and supporting diversity and difference be it neurological, learning, physical or social / emotional. Advocacy for change particularly in primary schools would go a long way to addressing and strengthening unique difference, to instil good mental health at an early age, rather than what currently experienced by children with disabilities in mainstream schools which is exclusion,misunderstanding and missed opportunities for growth, education and inclusion.
Targeted education to educators would assist in preventing additional psychological services required in the close future for these children, as it stands only 10 Medicare rebated sessions are available under a mental health care plan per year. This is no where near enough.
Schools need to be informed of their duty of care to all students, including those with disabilities, whether they have funding or not, and if they do have funding schools need to be accountable for using that funding correctly, to ensure the child receives adequate amd timely support.
Reasonable- actually going to benefit the person (not the provider)
Necessary- a service or good that
will / does
enable a person to live to a human standard that without, their life is impaired.
I went through the costly and timely experience of having my child assessed at age 3, by a private educational developmental child psychologist, speech pathologist who was qualified to to a full comprehensive evaluation, and educational developmental paediatrician. After $10,000 and a diagnosis I carefully planned how I would utilise fascia funding I was provided to gain support via speech, ot and psychology over the following 3 years to ensure my child would have the best chance to participate in school and our community. I applied for ndis when he turned 7 after stretching the facsia funding right out as planned and his application was rejected. It’s taken 4 years of me pushing reviews to obtain access.
All the years of work my son did in social skills groups, speech, school readiness, ot, one on one psychology has all been undone.
My child’s school was provided all psyc reports, yet they didn’t and still don’t support his disability or learning differences either.
I’ve had to pay for all services privately the past 4 years so my child has had to miss crucial services as I’ve had to pick and choose which need is most dire, due to financial cost.
It’s imperative all children with a disability diagnosis are accepted onto ndis. All kinders and schools need to be educated surrounding their role in the disability standards in education, and that currently, having a child with a diagnosis of a permanent life long disability-isn’t enough to be granted access to ndis no matter how much parents try.
Less recruitment for “planning providers” (or pay) and more training in quality professional adequate services?
If services were made easily accessible to the actual people who require them, rather than service providers who are looking for a % cut of participants funding this would make the world of difference
This isn’t something I’ve faced
I’m currently working on obtaining quality services, wait list has been almost 12 months.
I wouldn’t know. Consistency?
Unsure
Accountability by law enforcement to service providers and ndis who don’t follow legislation
Yes.
I cannot state strongly enough how crucial early intervention services are for children with disabilities.
In their school life, for their social
life, family life, our in their communities.
Children with developmental, neurological, physical, social emotional disabilities- with life long permanent implication’s require support understanding and inclusion.
It’s their right as children. Every child’s right.
To deny them this, in australia ..while service providers are making a substantial living….re-wording form applications with provider-selective-ableism-phrasing of “impairments” and “capacity” is a disgrace to us all.
This needs to change, please