Page 823 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 20 March 2019
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categories with the highest levels of support are both categories where people experiencing them would have difficulties or challenges in not only understanding the ins and outs of the NDIS but in being able to articulate how they would like to exercise choice and control in their lives. They would have difficulties in finding out what support exists let alone knowing where to go to get the supports they need.
Speaking as someone who was on the committee looking into the NDIS system, it became abundantly clear to us that most people who did well out of that system were people who had family support for advocacy. For people from a CALD background their family will also be from that background and may well find it harder than Anglo-Saxon families to organise that support and advocacy. That was one of the reasons one of the recommendations from that report was for the ACT government to increase support for advocacy. That is absolutely vital to getting a good outcome and particularly in these cases.
The situation, of course, gets worse for our older citizens. One in 10 of us will experience dementia after the age of 65 and three in 10 after the age of 85. Dementia is the single greatest cause of disability and is the second leading cause of death for these age groups.
We should all appreciate and know that as we age we revert to our mother tongue as the preferential way of communicating. If you have dementia the chances that you understand clearly what you need and where to get the supports you need are minimal, particularly if the information is in what has become to you—or maybe always was—a foreign and unintelligible language.
Add to that the experience of discrimination. The survey of disability, ageing and carers undertaken by the ABS indicates that in 2015 almost one in 12 Australians with disability—281,000 people or 8.6 per cent—reported that they had experienced discrimination or unfair treatment because of their disability. Young people with disability—that is, those between 15 and 25 years—were more likely to report the experience of discrimination—20 per cent of them—than those aged 65 or over, which was only two per cent. I suggest that that was because the aged people were being discriminated against on grounds other than just being aged.
Over one-third of women and over one-quarter of men aged 15 or over had avoided situations because of their disability. That is not only discrimination because of their disability. One in five Australians has experienced racism in the past 12 months according to one of the biggest surveys ever conducted on racism and prejudice in Australia commissioned by SBS with the western Sydney uni in 2017. To my knowledge, there is no comprehensive data collection that looks at both racism and disability discrimination rates together, but I imagine that if there were the figures would shame us all.
I note the NDIA has a specific cultural and linguistic diversity strategy which was developed last year in consultation with key peak bodies and people with disability. It is scheduled to conclude in 2019, by which time their aim is to have 20 per cent of participants from CALD backgrounds. On their website information is available in
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