We can fix NDIS mess through education

The National Disability Insurance Scheme is one of Australia’s most significant and ambitious social reforms. It is world-leading and something of which all Australians can be proud. It is, however, by no means perfect. And no one has a bigger stake in an efficient, effective and sustainable scheme than people with disability.

So part of the solution has to be codesigning the NDIS with participants and taking on board their life experiences. The scheme’s goals will be realised when the NDIS achieves long-term sustainability by growing tax receipts and savings from the broader welfare system.

It can’t be the NDIS alone that does the heavy lifting.

For people with a disability to have the same opportunities to get involved in employment and work, the NDIS must work with the education system, and there must be a change in workplace culture to make them truly inclusive.

One problem is that the NDIS is seen as the only boat in the ocean – certain cohorts within the NDIS have looked for support from the NDIS because nothing else is available.

Some of these people may be better supported by the state-funded education system than the NDIS.

Another issue is price caps, which have become in effect used for price setting with some NDIS service providers using them to charge prices 100 per cent higher than for similar NON-NDIS services or products. By abolishing the price caps, this would prevent the anchoring of every service to the cap.

For this to be effective we also need to build participant’s capacity to make informed decisions, negotiate prices and use payment methods that don’t signal that the service is being paid for with NDIS funds.

Peter Scutt is the executive director of Mable Technologies, a digital platform that enables NDIS participants to directly build a team of self-employed support providers.