I have now joined the ranks of the NDIS, and am amazed at how complex and badly developed the whole thing is. User friendly, intuitive, common sense, and easy to understand are all terms foreign to the NDIS at the moment.
I look at the NDIS portal and wonder how the ‘average person in the street’ could ever hope to navigate their way through a due diligence process to find the right service providers. The language used is chaotic (different terminology to describe the same thing between the hard copy and the application), full of codes, and, cant and jargon (except to the people working in the immediate area).
The application is incredibly undeveloped. It is like a beta version. The search functions don’t work properly excluding relevant data and including irrelevant data. It is not possible to limit searches to find exactly what you want. There are only three items you can filter on. You cant even list in alphabetical order, or proximity order.
The providers are not prepared either. When searching providers in an area entries come up, but when you click on the link, the providers are interstate with no physical presence where they are needed. Also, providers come up in searches for specific services, only to discover that they don’t provide those services (yet?).
This is like being sick in hospital and asking for porridge for breakfast. What is delivered next morning is a sheaths of oats, a couple of rocks, a camp stove, and being told the cow is outside… somewhere. There’s your breakfast. Help yourself.
Not at all what I expected. I thought that this was developed for the disabled of Australia and their carers to easily navigate through and get the specific help they require in a quick and efficient manner. What it is at the moment is a cobbled attempt that should never have seen the light of day. It is apparent that a huge industry will have to develop to assist users to actually use the system. That money would be better spent on making the system user friendly and intuitive.
I am eligible to sign up for NDIS but it is so overly complex and bureaucratic I will await an improvement or for Hell to freeze over. The latter will probably be the one to happen first.
I agree @meltam with all your sentiments you expressed in your last post.
That reads like many things government and it should not since even the most cursory oversight and review should catch anomalies and inconsistencies. Unfortunately understaffed and underfunded political horses do not have the luxury to plan and execute programs, just the mandates ‘to do’.
Robo-Debt gets the gong for government arrogance (from the Minister down) and gross incompetence at execution, but this must get an honourable mention or better.
It could be that the NDIA is designed to keep money rather than distribute it. It would be interesting to read its real KPI’s. This story is appalling.
One half of Australia seems to think this is how it is.
To P… off one big Australian State is unfortunate.
To P… off the two largest states at the same time and both sides of the political spectrum at the same time?
“Pure genius?”
I feel that this Government accepted very ungraciously to implement the NDIS under public pressure. Their hearts or wallets have never been in it. In fact just the opposite. They seem to see this as a burden on the public purse. Therefore they have done everything they can to hobble the NDIA & the NDIS in the hope that the Government can then justify closing it down because it doesn’t work.
If this was a system to support their donors, such as the mining industry or the banks, they would be busting themselves to make sure that the system works and the money gets to the recipients.
I would suggest that is only the tip of the discontentment iceberg, as most people would not think of appealing to the AAT, largely because they have no idea of what it is, what is involved, & what their rights are.
It would be interesting to know how the 7 fold increase relates to the substantial increase in services provided in the past few years. Commenting on raw numbers without knowing all the facts can be problematic as it may not reflect really what is happening.
The 1720 appeals compare to 391,999 NDIS participants (30 June 2020). I wonder how many participants there were in the NDIS when 215 NDIS-related appeals occurred in 2016-17. Information I can find indicate 89610 participants (about 23% less) in 2016-17.
It would also be interesting to know the nature of the complaint…were many rejected qualifications or other non-NDIS outcome based complaints.
It appears government really wants to have as little ‘NDIS’ as possible and has found a way to minimise costs possibly even below the minimum. It is a he said she said but the anecdotal evidence appears damning.
, hopefully it provides a useful repository for Community members.
