"THE best" NDIS has a stable, trained workforce that understands their role is to support - not control - people with disabilities, Hunter advocates say.
Disability support workers, providers, clients and their families gathered at Foreshore Park in Newcastle on Tuesday to campaign for reforms to improve the National Disability Insurance Scheme.
Industry representatives said the sector would need 100,000 new disability support workers in the next two years. But without appropriate training, access to leave entitlements and secure, minimum conditions - attracting them would be difficult.
Disability support worker Chantel Brown said people working in the sector did not currently receive enough - if any - training, despite working with some of the community's most vulnerable people.
"You wouldn't trust a doctor, a nurse or a teacher to look after your child or person with a disability without appropriate training," Ms Brown said. "Yet we are trusting people who are sometimes not trained at all to do those things. It's quite scary."
Unlike teachers and nurses, disability support workers were unable to take their leave entitlements with them should they switch services.
"Over COVID, a lot of us had to use our annual leave because our program either shut down or we had to isolate with COVID," she said. "I'm getting married in March, and I don't have enough leave to take my honeymoon."
Andrew Vodik, of Community Disability Alliance Hunter (CDAH), said the current disability training package was no longer "fit-for-purpose". As a person with a disability and an NDIS recipient, he said under-resourcing had also led time-poor support workers to become more task-focused than people-focused. They needed better pay and leave conditions.
Secretary of the Australian Services Union NSW & ACT, Angus McFarland, said simple changes could make a big difference.
"You can't build a strong NDIS off the back of workers who have no training, no leave and want to get out of the sector," he said.
