Admin, Author at Queensland Advocacy Incorporated

Webinar – NDIS Possibilities – SIL & Core Supports Discussion

Join us for a conversation about how NDIS support coordinators can support people with disability to live a good life!

About this Event

Are you providing support coordination to someone who is a participant of the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) and requires a high level of support? Have you been told the only way that support can be delivered is through the Supported Independent Living (SIL) model of care and/or that the person must share with someone else in order to have 24/7 care funding provided?

If so, and you want to learn about other options available, then this webinar is for you!

Many people with disability have no desire to share their home with others, and if they do, it is their choice who they share with and how they utilize their NDIS funding. Learn about the options available from QAI advocates who will draw on their extensive experience supporting people with disability and their families to appeal decisions of the NDIA.

After this webinar, you will be able to:

Understand what SIL is and the historical connections SIL has to institutionalisation;
Realize how SIL can be restrictive to participants’ desires;
Understand what other options are available;
Know what evidence is required to make options other than SIL a reality; and
Understand a participant’s review rights.

The webinar will run for 1 ½ hours in total (including ½ hour Q&A).

If you have a question you would like answered during the webinar, please complete this survey or email us at least 5 working days in advance of the webinar at ndis@qai.org.au. We will tailor the content of the presentation to address questions raised and/or respond to questions during the Q and A. As this is our first time delivering via an online platform, we have limited attendee numbers to 30.

Please email any accessibility requirements to ndis@qai.org.au by 14.09.2020 to ensure we are able to make reasonable adjustments for all attendees.

QAI’s NDIS appeals advocates look forward to having an open and honest conversation about how support coordinators can work with their participants as well as the NDIA to support people with disability to live a good life.

QAI look forward to planning further webinars on this topic for NDIS participants, families and advocates – please keep an eye out for these!

**QAI thankfully acknowledge the funding from the Australian Government Department of Social Services which enables us to provide our NDIS appeals support service and share our knowledge with you.**

A Guide to the Human Rights Act 2019 (Qld)

This booklet is an easy English guide to the new Queensland human rights legislation, which came into effect on 1 January 2020. The booklet covers what human rights are, what human rights are protected by the Act, who has human rights, who has to respect human rights, how human rights are breached and what to do if you feel your human rights have been breached.

Illustrations for the booklet were done by Cartoonist and Illustrator, Simon Kneebone and QAI would like to acknowledge his great talent and thank him for bringing this publication to life!

You can view the full PDF version of the booklet at the link below. If you would like a hard copy version of the booklet please contact our office on 07 3844 4200 or qai@qai.org.au.

QAI would also like to extend our thanks to the Department of Social Services for providing the funding to make this publication possible as well as our Patron, His Excellency The Honourable Paul de Jersey AC, Governor of Queensland.

NDIS Participant First Initiative – Help Shape the NDIS

The NDIA have announced the creation of the Participant First Initiative. They want to work with NDIS participants, their nominees, their carers or people with disability who are not NDIS participants to help shape and reform the NDIS.

There are three levels of engagement available depending on how involved you want to be.

HAVE YOUR SAY!

You can find more information on the Initiative as well as the form to register your interest, on the NDIS website here.

Open letter from the disability sector calls for greater accountability re NDIA settlement outcomes

The Public Interest Advocacy Centre (PIAC) “has joined over 20 major organisations in the disability community in calling on the National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIA) to make public the details of appeal cases it is settling with scheme participants, to promote transparency, accountability, and an overall fairer system.”

You can read PIAC’s full media release here and the open letter here.

Disability Services Worker Screening – QAI Submission

QAI has made a submission on the Disability Services and Other Legislation (Worker Screening) Amendment Bill 2020 (QLD) to the Committee Secretary of the Health, Communities, Disability Services and Domestic and Family Violence Prevention Committee.

Below are the Recommendations QAI made to the Committee.

You can read the full submission here.

QAI recommends:

The proposed new section 14 of the Disability Services Act (as outlined in clause 9 of the Bill) be updated to change the definition of funded service provider to include the State.
The Queensland Government publish its framework for deciding whether a person poses an unacceptable risk of harm to people with disability which is more exhaustive than that provided in the proposed new Part 5, Division 4 Subdivision 3 of the Disability Services Act (as outlined in clause 11 of the Bill).
The Queensland Government work with the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission, plan or self-managed participants, and unregistered service providers to encourage optional workers to request a national worker screening clearance.

Supported Independent Living – Position Paper

QAI has released a Position Paper on Supported Independent Living (SIL) arrangements. The below Position Statement is an extract from the paper.

You can read the full document here.

Position Statement

The following position statement is based on the values, beliefs and aspirations that Australians with disability can have a good but ordinary life when they have personal power, control and are
supported to exercise their autonomy and rights as other citizens.

Supported Independent Living (SIL) has become the mechanism for the proliferation of the archaic block funded group home. Rather than enabling a person to live ‘independently in their home’, it is in reality shared care in a congregated setting, often not of the person’s choosing but instead organised, negotiated, and created by the NDIS system and the service providers.
A dearth of truthful information about the inflexibility of SIL, has reinforced the misconception that a person with high and or complex support needs must therefore enter a SIL arrangement. Most people do not have any independent unbiased information about SIL and have the mistaken belief that because they live in shared accommodation they must continue in the existing arrangements.
People formerly living alone and supported for 24 hours of support, 7 days per week under the state system, are pressured by NDIA Planners as unwilling participants into SIL arrangements and costing Plans accordingly.
In most instances, the avoidance of information about alternatives and benefits of accessing the NDIS with a non-SIL funded Plan, and lack of transparency regarding the over-inflation of SILS quotes is forcing more people back to the archaic model of group or shared home living.
If a participant wants to share with another person and articulates a desire to share
some supports with their chosen housemate, (ie: overnight support only, or a combination of one or two activities), each person is very possibly able to obtain a Plan that is not only going to meet their needs but also be less restrictive, more flexible should either housemate wish to relocate, and is possibly more efficient and effective.
The solution to the abovementioned is to abolish Supported Independent Living (SIL) from Plans.
Replace it with individualised NDIS Plans for everyone including people who wish to share accommodation and support. When and where people who choose to live together, wish to share supports they merely state that intention in their Plans.

Group Homes – Submission to the DRC

QAI made a submission to the Disability Royal Commission on Group Homes and our concerns for the vulnerable people who live in them.

Below is a short excerpt fromt he submissions introduction followed by links to the full submission and all its attachments.

Introduction

This submission focuses on the experiences of vulnerable people with disability who do not have the opportunity or voice to express their own wants and wishes directly. Many of the people are often forgotten in places that do not feel like a home, are unsuitable for them and give rise to a series of physical, emotional, and/or sexual abuses that infringe or remove basic human rights. The passage of the Human Rights Act 2019 (Qld), which commenced operated from 1 January 2020, provides, for the first time in Queensland,

You can read the full submission here.

List of attachments submitted:

Attachment A QAI Position Paper A Home of One’s Own

Attachment B QAI Report Legislation and Life

Attachment C OPA Upholding the right to life and health A review of the deaths in care

Attachment D CCQ Deaths in care – Final Expert Report

Attachment E QAI Submission to DSS Thin Markets Project

Attachment F QAI Submission to JSC Inquiry NDIS Workforce

Attachment G QAI Submission to JSC Inquiry SIL

Attachment H Submission to DRC Issues Emergency Planning and Response submission