Blind Citizens Australia: Response to the Draft Rule on Plan Management

March 2013

Blind Citizens Australia is the peak national consumer body of and for people who are blind or vision impaired. Blind Citizens Australia has made a number of submissions on the design of the NDIS, including our recent submission on the consultation paper to inform the design of the Rules which we refer FaHCSIA to.

Unfortunately, due to the very short timeframe to provide comment on the draft Rules, Blind Citizens Australia notes that our comments cannot be read as representative of the full views and experiences of our members. Our feedback below has been informed by member feedback via teleconference, our extensive consultation during the Productivity Commission process and our expertise in issues relating to access to services as people who are blind or vision impaired.

Part 3: Unreasonable Risk: Criteria for Decision Making

Blind Citizens Australia, in principle, agrees with the proposed criteria for determining unreasonable risk. In particular, we acknowledge the need to ensure that children are safeguarded in instances where their representative or nominee may not have the capacity to effectively manage their plan, or where it can be identified that the decisions they are making are not in the best interests of the child.

In regard to adult scheme participants, we agree, in principle, with the parameters that have been established to determine unreasonable risk. We do however recommend that the criteria to determine what constitutes an unreasonable risk is more clearly defined in operational guidelines with reference to the appeals process to ensure that people with disability have every opportunity to manage their own plan where a participant is able to.

Blind Citizens Australia, in principle, supports the safeguards that have been proposed. In particular, we believe that it is crucial that budget training is offered to all NDIS participants as a default which a participant can choose to accept or decline. Plan management and managing an individual package of funding is a largely unfamiliar concept to people with disability, more so for people who are blind or vision impairedgiven the limited choice of financial management software packages that are accessible to screen reading software. Even those who have good financial management skills will not be familiar with managing such a large package of money, having to prioritise payment of supports and acquitting funds.

Our members remain concerned about the undue influence that could result from situations where a person’s plan manager also happens to be a service provider. Our members’ concerns regarding plan management and mechanisms to minimise conflict of interest have been included in our response to the NDIS rule on registered providers of support.

Part 4: Payment of NDIS Amounts:

Blind Citizens Australia does not have any further specific advice regarding this Part.

Part 5: Grace Period for Temporary Absences from Australia

Blind Citizens Australia supports the proposal that a participant that has a plan may be temporarily absent from Australia for a certain period of time without affecting their plan.

While the Rule is clear that a person’s plan will continue during the grace period, it is not completely clear whether a participant is able to access the supports that are necessary while overseas. For example, a person who is blind may require support to navigate new, unfamiliar locations (in the form of sighted assistance) which may not be an existing need in a person’s plan while in Australia. A dog guide user (the generic term for guide dogs and seeing eye dogs) might have expenses related to taking their dog guide overseas such as AQIS quarantine requirements, vet checks etc. The operational guidelines need to make clear whether a person can access supports while they are overseas which have not been pre-purchased (ie. aids and equipment) and whether a participant can spend NDIS funds on relevant supports while overseas during a grace period.

It is also important that the operational guidelines stipulate the timeframe to reactivate a plan and in turn access supports if a Plan has been suspended.

Part 6: Describing Supports in a Participant’s Plan

The Act indicates that some supports in a participants plan may be described generally, while in other instances, the specifics of a support may be explicitly referenced, including details about what the support is and how it should be provided. These supports will then have to be provided in the way that is referenced in the plan.

Clause 6.4 (e) specifies that the CEO may make this decision where a participant’s disability requires a specialist, evidence informed support provided by a qualified person. Blind Citizens Australia would support this clause where it relates to what our members deem to be “critical supports” such as dog guide training, orientation and mobility and occupational therapy.

Clause 6.4 (f) states that the CEO may also make this decision where the participant accessed the NDIS by satisfying the early intervention requirements. As noted in the last point, this would be relevant for critical supports. However there should not be an automatic view that all supports accessed through early intervention, such as aids and equipment, should be subject to this restriction.

Clause 6.5(a) notes that “the CEO is to specify that the support is to be provided by the Agency if it is more cost effective for the support to be provided by the Agency”. It is imperative that the operational guidelines clarify what this means in practical terms – for example the provision of a dog guide can be very expensive but provide significant functional capacity. The NDIA in of and itself would not have the expertise and investment to deliver these supports directly and therefore would likely use well recognised registered providers of supports. The operational guidelines will also need to specify to what extent a participant has influence on the decision, particularly if the participant has reservations about accessing supports from a particular provider due to past negative experiences.

Blind Citizens Australia maintains that participants should have a high degree of flexibility in implementing their supports irrespective of whether the supports in their plan are listed generally or specifically identified. For our members, general reference to a type of support such as ‘purchase of technology or support to assist communication’ could provide significant flexibility to enable a person to choose from adaptive equipment of all types (text enlargement, screen reading software, Braille displays or note takers), choose where to purchase it from (a local supplier or from overseas), to consider mainstream non assistive technology that could provide the same or better outcomes depending on a person’s needs (such as an Ipad or Iphonewith their universal design providing accessibility) or to look at other options, such as hiring a personal reader to read documents or mail. If a support is specified in a plan, operational guidelines should ensure that the criteria is not so prescriptive to limit innovative and flexible decisions to be made by participants.