Page 4374 - Week 14 - Thursday, 28 November 2013
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need to invest in increasing the local labour market and retaining the workers that we have.
I mention briefly a small investment of $30,000 to develop a peer workforce that provides opportunities for people with mental health issues to gain training, confidence and skills needed to take part in the paid workforce. There is increasing evidence of the value of peer support and a trained peer workforce as an effective way of delivering support services.
We also need to make the environment conducive to new providers in the ACT to meet the increased demand expected as a result of almost the doubling of funding in the ACT—up to $342 million by 2019—being provided to people to meet their needs. It makes sense to build on the existing strategies that support our ACT providers in the months ahead.
Twenty community providers have already had the opportunity to benefit from the Community Services Directorate governance and financial management initiative, which is designed to increase the strategic management and governance skills in community organisations and to improve the resilience of the sector in a complex and rapidly-changing environment. Providers can access packages capped at $20,000 and receive tailored professional assessment and advice on their organisational financial management, governance arrangements and business planning. This business advice is provided by high profile and national business management firms.
Our primary investment, of course, must be in preparing people with a disability and their families for the national disability insurance scheme to understand what the national disability insurance scheme is intended to achieve, its principles and opportunities. People will need different types of information and support to take the most advantage from what will be a cultural shift in how they might envision their lives. Doors which could not be conceivably opened in the past because of the limited supports and service people had access to may now be able to be opened. People who need higher levels of support will be able to look beyond the day-to-day challenges of not just getting their most basic care met. They will be able to challenge their aspirations in relation to employment, study, recreation and education.
When I last provided the Assembly with an update on the NDIS in October, I spoke about the additional $500,000 the Community Service Directorate had received from the commonwealth government. This funding is to further our work to enable people to prepare for the ACT introduction of the NIDS, and these funds are being used in a range of ways: $160,000 has been allocated to the mental health community to prepare people with a disability related to mental health issues, and this includes developing a gateway where people can meet with NDIS agency planners and where those planners can find out more about and make prompt contact with the existing supports and services that participants with mental health related disability require; $20,000 will be invested in additional supported decision-making programs, which particularly target people with a dual disability; and we are investing $80,000 to support the community conversations which I talked about last update.
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