Concerns NDIS causing disability service cuts
23/08/2013
Tom Nightingale reported this story on Friday, August 23, 2013 on ABC Radio’s PM programme – you can listen to the audio version of the story here.
PETER LLOYD: Nearly two months have passed since the national disability insurance scheme began operating in some parts of the country.
But since then, it appears some families not part of the initial rollout are worse off.
The issue, it seems, is due to nursing and carer fees going up.
Tom Nightingale reports from Adelaide.
(Sound of piano playing)
TOM NIGHTINGALE: Jewels Smith finds music helps her severely disabled daughter, Sienna, to relax. She holds her daughter’s hand and helps her play on a keyboard in the loungeroom.
JEWELS SMITH: She’s always loved music. When she was a little baby she wasn’t able to open up her hands and I discovered that music helped her relax and it helped her connect with outside world. So we’ve always played music and keyboards in particular – Sienna loves . So yeah, so we have a lot of music in our house.
TOM NIGHTINGALE: Sienna is 11 years old. She and her mother live in Adelaide’s eastern suburbs.
Sienna is in a wheelchair and uses an oxygen tank to breathe. She also uses a feeding device connected to her stomach to eat and needs constant medical care through the day. But in the six weeks since the beginning of July, Jewels Smith says the family’s life has become much tougher.
JEWELS SMITH: It’s not safe, you know in a hospital setting, you have two nurses that help a child like Sienna get up.
TOM NIGHTINGALE: The family was receiving three hours of respite care a week – now, it’s two. The four hours of weekly nursing care she received was also cut, as was a hundred hours a year of other nursing help.
JEWELS SMITH: To continuously do this day in and day out isn’t safe but obviously I want my daughter to get up and enjoy her day. So I wear a smile and we make it fun.
TOM NIGHTINGALE: Those services were funded by the South Australian Government, through an agency called Novita. The agency’s operations director is Julie Astley.
JULIE ASTLEY: There is a finite amount of money and there are more clients with an increasing complexity of need, that that finite pool of money actually needs to service, coupled with the service provider increase in fees.
TOM NIGHTINGALE: Julie Astley says she can’t say how much the contracts have increased by. But the price rise is such that despite care hours dropping, the dollar value of those services adds up to the same as last year.
Julie Astley says the non-profit agency is in talks with the state government for more money.
The office of the state’s Disability Minister, Tony Piccolo, told PM the agency’s funding is up 6 per cent up this financial year. But the increase clearly isn’t covering the third party fee increases.
PM wasn’t able to find out who the third parties are and hence asked for an explanation.
Kelly Vincent is a state parliamentarian with the Dignity for Disabilities Party, and says she knows of three other families in the same situation.
KELLY VINCENT: Well I think there are some very serious questions that need to be asked. One; why are the cost for services going up so much? And two; why aren’t people being properly informed of those reasons?
TOM NIGHTINGALE: The changes happened at the same time as DisabilityCare, or the National Disability Insurance Scheme, began.
Kelly Vincent says the disability scheme may be causing the fee hikes for carers.
KELLY VINCENT: It certainly is a possibility that now with the extra funding coming, becoming available under DisabilityCare that service providers and individuals are seeing a chance to grab a buck – an extra buck or two and taking advantage of that.
And I think that’s certainly why government and families need to remain vigilant about the services that they’re accessing.
TOM NIGHTINGALE: In her loungeroom in the Adelaide suburb of Hackney, Jewels Smith says the explanations so far aren’t good enough.
JEWELS SMITH: We’re a team and Sienna deserves to have a good life, just like everyone else and that’s what hurts the most because now our life is restricted. We’re not able to do the things that we did before and it’s very hard to make those limited choices.
Our choices have been taken away from us and that hurts Sienna.
PETER LLOYD: That’s Adelaide woman, Jewels Smith, the reporter Tom Nightingale.
