NDIS Class Action to resolve harm.

Australia’s National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) should have been a world-leading success.?But, less than ten years after the legislation was passed in 2013, the scheme is under extreme pressure.?People with disabilities are being denied access and are short-changed on supports.?The Administrative Appeals Tribunal has a massive backlog to resolve of appeals against NDIS decisions.?The forecast cost of the scheme has blown out way beyond the original estimate.?The man who designed the scheme, the Hon. Bill Shorten MP has just appointed a new board chair and a new CEO and announced a major review of the scheme, in an effort to bring it back under control.

My adult son is an NDIS Participant, following a brain haemorrhage in 2015.?My sister is an NDIS participant, following a stroke in 2016.?Through participation in the NDIS participant and support communities, I have come to know many people who are participants, or who fit the government’s quaint name for those who provide unpaid support – the carers.?

While NDIS does provide support to many people, and has enabled many carers to resume normal lives, it has also left many people with insufficient (sometimes zero) support, and it has harmed many participants and carers.

Prior to the NDIS, state based support arrangements funded support organisations which then provided support through a variety of schemes.?But the supports were unequally distributed, often unaccountable, and relied heavily on both charity and the unpaid work of those ubiquitous carers, such as mothers who cared for their disabled children through their entire lives, never having the opportunity to work, or create value on a larger scale.?The NDIS was supposed to give individuals choice and control over their own lives, and deliver supports that were reasonable and necessary, enabling participants to achieve their own goals.

Is it overly political to suggest that a scheme designed by a Labor Government, but then entirely implemented by a Liberal (Conservative) government might not turn out as expected??This is the clear case in Australia. The just-launched enquiry will tell us just how badly the scheme has been perverted, and provide us the roadmap for returning it to its proper purpose.

But the enquiry will not resolve the harm already done to the likely thousands of participants and carers who have been harmed in the meantime.?Since full roll-out of the NDIS began in 2016, many people have found themselves bewildered, stressed and fighting for the rights of people who have disabilities, because the National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIA) has seemed to fail the tests of good behaviour by a Government Agency.?Indeed, in more recent times, it has seemed that the NDIA has become intensely adversarial and punitive in its approach, not only denying supports, but now arbitrarily reducing supports that had been agreed.?

Dealing with the appalling behaviour of the NDIA has caused many people to experience psychological, physical and financial harm.?People who should have been treated far better have instead experienced mental and physical illness, loss of relationships, loss of income, loss of employment and loss of assets, and probably more.?My mental health is so affected that I can no longer work in my field of expertise, and often need days of rest to recover from events that trigger my recently diagnosed Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Necessary change in behaviour at the NDIA should come from the just-announced review.?But what will deliver the care, support and compensation needed by the many who have been harmed?

As announced on my LinkedIn profile today, I am proud to be leading a community of more than 250 members who want to develop and participate in a class action. We are researching legal cause and experiences of people to build what may become one of Australia's most significant legal actions. ?Our community has its primary presence on that other social media platform (Facebook of course), in a group simply called “NDIS Class Action”.?There is also a NDIS Class Action group reserved on LinkedIn which can connect people from here who simply cannot abide that other platform ??.

The groups are open to all who can identify the harm they have experienced, and those who can contribute relevant professional experience and skill to strengthen the case.?That is – it’s not for everybody, but we hope that filtered membership will help us keep the trolls out.

Keep an eye open.?This is the most significant journey of my life, and it has only just begun.