AHPA is joining peak bodies and organisations across Australia, including Disability Intermediaries and National Disability Services to call on the National Disability Insurance Agency and government to take urgent action to secure the future of services for people with disability and create a better NDIS.
Together, we’ve created the website 4abetterNDIS.com.au, where people concerned about the future of disability services can take action, have their say and send a letter to the federal government and their local MP asking for a commitment to addressing the current crisis in funding for disability services.
Following the recent announcement of a totally inadequate annual pricing review by the National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIA), evidence is mounting of a catastrophic market failure in the NDIS.
Providers of quality disability services are already reaching breaking point. A recent survey by National Disability Services found that 75 per cent of providers are considering stopping some or all of their disability services because of the price limits that came in on 1 July.
The NDIA’s unrealistic approach to pricing undermines the ability of registered providers to deliver quality, sustainable disability services and is undermining NDIS reform.
Withdrawal of services will most affect participants with the greatest need — those with complex, high-intensity or behavioural support needs and those in regional and remote Australia.
We need fair and independent pricing that maximises choice and control for participants by ensuring that allied health providers can operate financially and continue to provide quality NDIS supports.
You can read our joint statement here.
We’re calling for immediate steps to address the funding crisis for disability services. A fact sheet detailing concerns related to allied health is available here.
Our key concerns are:
Allied health supports have now not had a price limit increase of any kind – not even indexation – for five years.
It adds insult to injury that media and Minister Shorten continue to refer to ‘price gouging’ providers charging an NDIS ‘wedding tax’ and supposedly benefiting endlessly from the proceeds.
Together with other providers, allied health professionals, have been expressing that if at times, they charge NDIS participants more than clients outside the Scheme (and still subject to the price limits), this is because providing NDIS supports has its own unique costs. The report claims to have heeded these submissions, but in setting the NDIS price limits the NDIA simply compares them to prices in other ‘markets’.
When there is a cost of living crisis, not increasing allied health price limits is effectively a price cut.
This is deeply concerning for NDIS participants as it compromises allied health workforce availability, and consequently reduces participant choice of supports.
The joint campaign #4aBetterNDIS has produced plain English fact sheets on the funding issues for the sector, to explain our concerns to the wider disability community. Please download and share this information widely in your networks.
You can help create a better NDIS by writing to your local federal MP and asking them to take urgent action to keep disability services open equitable, accessible and sustainable for service providers and consumers.
The letter includes some predetermined structure, but please add further details about the situation of your organisation and how this will affect your local community, as well as personal details about your experience that you are comfortable sharing. It is critical that we express the widespread multi-layered impact of these issues.