With the National Disability Insurance Scheme’s (NDIS) emphasis on increased choice, some of Inverell’s smaller services are finding themselves in great demand.
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“For me as a private practitioner and private therapist, I’m actually having to consider whether I might put somebody additional on to cover that demand,” local speech pathologist Linda Foskey said.
Linda said that in the past, many children up to the age of seven had access to private therapies such as speech pathology through the Helping Children with Autism and Better Start packages, but couldn’t afford to continue after the early intervention period.
She said that as families identify communication as a goal in their plans, many of her clients are returning for ongoing therapy.
Those who choose to self manage their package can choose any provider, including those not registered with the NDIS, pay directly for their service and later claim the funds back from the National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIA). Meanwhile, Linda encouraged those using bigger services to remember they can also ask for a specific private therapist.
Occupational therapist Bregje Van Der Heijden agreed that demand was rising.
“When people need my services, they have often a lot of other bills that they have to look after anyway, so to have therapy on top of that just stretches them really to the limit. And now we are just able to not have that financial stress on people.”
However Bregje warned against taking the government’s ‘shop around’ philosophy too much to heart in country areas, and to be aware of the shortage of specialist health professionals. She said this may mean ending up on waiting lists.
“What I find is that the government puts a lot of pressure on the people who have an approved plan to start using that funding. However, there are only 40 hours in the week for me and I just can’t do everything at once,” she said.
“It’s not part of the funding that there are therapists coming out of the ground. The specialised services, there is still a big shortage there.”
Bregje felt that the NDIS model was not the problem in and of itself, but took issue with the sometimes unrealistic expectations it encouraged.
“At the end of the day, we still really need to approach the health professionals to come this way and show them that it’s not that bad out here in the bush,” she said. Bregje said that although distance did mean waiting for certain resources, support wasn’t lacking.
“The people who work here, they really stick together because we know that we’ve only got a little bunch of people working in that disability world, so we’re all together,” she said.
Bregje said that she does like that the NDIS avoids putting people in boxes. She appreciated that instead of funding being based on diagnosis, it focuses on function.
“What you have now – for example for the kids with autism – you just get $12,000 in funding. If you need $6000, you still get the $12,000, if you need $24,000, you still get the $12,000,” she said.
“(With the NDIS) the more support you need, the more funding there is for you, regardless of the diagnosis,” she said.
Begje was also pleased to see people with rare disabilities were covered, and said that in the past, having an uncommon diagnosis often meant missing out on funding.