The federal government’s highly controversial planned changes to the NDIS will limit the ability of people in prison to access the disability support scheme and will disproportionately impact Indigenous Australians, the Prisoners Legal Service has warned.
The Coalition is planning to introduce independent assessments to the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS), which would fundamentally alter the functioning of the scheme. These assessments would be used to determine the level of support an individual requires, and will replace the use of the participants own doctors and specialists.
In a submission to a joint committee inquiry into the planned changes, the Prisoners Legal Service (PLS) said these changes will hit prisoners the hardest, and impact their ability to get parole or early release, and increase the likelihood of recidivism.
People in prisons have a higher rate of disability than the general population. In 2019-20, nearly 90 percent of the legal services’ clients had disabilities, and more than 35 percent identified as Indigenous.
Access to the NDIS is “extremely beneficial” for individuals in prison, the PLS said, but the introduction of mandatory independent assessments will impact those with safe and established relationships with health practitioners.
“Mandatory independent assessments will deny some participants and prospective participants this choice,” the PLS submission said.
“In some cases, mandatory assessments will result in people being forced to relive significant trauma with a professional with whom they have no established relationship.”
The changes will likely lead to people in prison being denied the disability support they require, the organisation warned.
“We consider that mandatory independent assessments will result in some people with significant needs losing some or all support, either because they are not comfortable complying with the assessment process or because they receive less comprehensive evidence than they would from another professional who they trust and / or who understands their history,” the PLS said.
“There is also evidence to suggest that over time the limited panel of assessors and rigid assessment tools will create structural bias and lead to assessments that do not meaningfully address criteria relevant to NDIS access.”
The organisation also said that the majority of Indigenous Australian clients are unaware of the NDIS itself, let alone the planned introduction of independent assessments, and the NDIA needs to improve its consultation with First Nations people.
“We echo the concerns these submissions raise about cultural safety and standardised assessment tools,” the submission said.
“In respect of tools, we add that psychological and psychiatric assessments for First Nations people in prison frequently apply tools that are not validated for use with First Nations groups in Australia and have no cultural applicability. We are concerned this issue will be replicated in independent assessments for the NDIS.”
In a separate submission to the inquiry, disability rights legal service Villamanta said that it may be difficult for those in prison to access evidence of their disability in order to get an independent assessment.
“The same individuals who have not been able to afford the evidence for an access request under current arrangements will experience the same issue under the proposed process,” the submission said.
Imprisoned people will also have their application for the NDIS denied if they are unable to comply with an independent assessment request.
“The addition of a third party provider will simply exacerbate the existing barriers, which fall disproportionately on those who do not have informal support, are not capable of independently engaging with the process, and who experience a range of barriers to exclusion of the community at large,” Villamanta said.
“A process that relies on the applicant to the NDIS having the capacity to ensure the process is completed, and within relevant timeframes, without support, will not lead to better access decisions.
“It will lead to more entrenched exclusion of certain cohorts and risks severe adverse outcomes for some individuals, such as permanently decreased functional capacity or even death, due to a lack of support.”
Access to the NDIS is already fraught for prisoners. A report by the Community Restorative Centre last year found that incarcerated individuals in NSW “frequently do not receive any support from the NDIS”, and when they do it is often not at the level required.
It found the NDIS to be a “complex, unwieldy, inconsistent and at times incoherent service system for incarcerated populations”.
Denham Sadler is a freelance journalist based in Melbourne. He covers politics and technology regularly for InnovationAus, and writes about other issues, including criminal justice, for publications including The Guardian and The Saturday Paper. He is also the senior editor of The Justice Map, a project to strengthen advocacy for criminal justice reform in Australia. You can follow him on Twitter.
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