The managers of the $23 billion National Disability Insurance Scheme have explicitly linked a controversial plan to force independent assessments on participants to cost saving measures despite earlier denials.
In the 2019-20 annual report for the National Disability Insurance Agency, which runs the NDIS, its leaders identified a series of existing and emerging ‘sustainability pressures’ that it once predicted should have abated by now.
Instead, some are gathering pace as the NDIS nears completion.
“There have been high levels of inflation within the Scheme since its inception,” the annual report says.
“In the early years of the scheme, this inflation reflected the dynamic and rapidly changing environment of a newly established scheme. However, these high levels of inflation have persisted over time, despite the increasing maturity of the scheme.
“It was expected that participant intake would slow over the 2019–20 financial year as transition-in arrangements had largely been completed; however, this has not occurred and there are few signs that the scheme’s rapid growth is abating.
“There has been a concerted effort over the 2019–20 year to reduce backlogs for access requests in progress and participants awaiting first plans, especially for children. However, even allowing for these reductions in backlogs, there have continued to be more children approaching the scheme than expected.”
The cost pressures of greatest concern to the NDIA cover essentially the entire program: more eligible children than forecast; more people remaining as full scheme participants after early intervention requirements have been met; average support package costs for participants with supported independent living (SIL) have jumped 39.5 per cent in almost two years to $325,000 per person, per annum; and, even excluding the intensive SIL, funding per person per year has risen 39.6 per cent to $34,900.
To give a quick snapshot of how quickly things are changing, just a year ago the NDIA predicted ‘about 500,000’ people would be scheme participants by 2023. In this year’s annual report, however, that forecast is now 532,000.
When the NDIS Minister Stuart Robert announced earlier this year the scheme will move to mandatory ‘independent assessments’ for all disabled people in the scheme and seeking access, disabled people were alarmed.
The agency added a section to its website to reassure its participants.
“Will assessors be focussed on reducing plan values and/or remove participants from the NDIS? No,” the website says.
But now, in a summary of the scheme’s sustainability contained within the latest annual report, it says otherwise.
“The NDIA is working on improving the consistency and equity in decision making of both access and planning decisions across all participants,” the report says.
“There is a focus on better aligning a participant’s support package to their circumstances through independent assessments. This will mean the right assessment questions and tools are being used to inform objective access and planning decisions that are more consistent and fair.
“The immediate and effective implementation of these management responses is required to both improve participant outcomes and ensure the scheme is financially sustainable into the future.”
During senate estimates on Thursday, agency officials revealed a trial that is meant to inform the full rollout of government-funded therapists, doctors and allied health staff for the so-called independent assessments has not collected data from more than 70 percent of people who took part.
“The agency admitted that they had not set a minimum survey completion rate for the initial trial, but acknowledged that had they set a goal for participation and completion it would have been less than the 28 per cent that opted to take part,” Greens Senator Jordon Steele-John said in a statement.
“To me, and to a great number of advocates and activists throughout the disability community, this process appears to be nothing more than a rubber stamp.”
Rick Morton is the author of the bestselling One Hundred Years of Dirt. He has been a journalist for 15 years with a particular focus on social policy and national affairs. Rick is the senior reporter for The Saturday Paper.
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