Page 710 - Week 03 - Tuesday, 26 February 2013
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The scope of the transition for community and government services supporting people with disability and psychosocial disabilities should not be understated. Current service providers will move from being fully block funded by government to operating in an open market in which the person with a disability has been provided with funding for reasonable and necessary supports and can choose who will provide their services. Government will also need to consider its role as a service provider in this new environment.
To help community sector service providers through the transition period, Disability ACT and mental health providers have been advised that their funding agreements will be extended for one year to June of next year to align with the commencement of clients transitioning to the NDIS.
The ACT NDIS Taskforce is working closely with the Health Directorate in developing a consistent approach to changes for funding for disability and mental health services during the one-year extension and helping providers with NDIS readiness during the transition period, which begins now and goes through to July 2016.
The NDIS Taskforce will be working with the community sector this year to map the programs that will be in scope for the NDIS. This mapping will explore the interface with mainstream services. Some services will continue to be provided as mainstream services, such as clinical health services, education, public housing and so on. Funding for other supports will transition to the NDIS. For example, hospitals will continue to be mainstream, but early intervention programs for children with a disability and the provision of equipment will be considered to be in the scope of the NDIS.
The home and community care program supports younger people with a moderate, severe or profound disability. There will be a need to transition HACC funding arrangements for some of these clients with a disability.
Looking ahead, we see the need for supports for those who need assistance to genuinely engage to their fullest potential through the control and choice offered through an NDIS. To help with this, we have provided $50,000 in grants for two providers of individual advocacy services. These grants will support the sector through these major reforms.
Advocacy for Inclusion was funded to undertake research on self-advocacy models for people with disabilities. AFI is exploring how much choice and control people with disabilities have in their lives, particularly over their support, and the factors that help them maximise their choice and control. The purpose of this is to identify what supports people with disabilities may need in order to have choice and control when the NDIS is introduced. It is a qualitative research project involving direct semi-structured interviews with people with disabilities.
The supported decision-making research project focused on empowering people to assert more control over their lives through self-directed funding. Many people who
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