Posts tagged National Disability Insurance Agency

On the cusp – What’s holding back SDA?

0 Comments read Disability, Features, NDIS

By Neena Bhandari

Sydney, 07.07.2022 (The Urban Developer): Delays in funding approvals, rising vacancy rates and lack of clarity on demand for specialist disability accommodation (SDA) are among the challenges facing providers and investors in the sector. By 2027, the specialist disability accommodation asset class is projected to be valued at around $12 billion.

Seventy-eight percent of SDA providers said the time taken by the National Disability Insurance Agency to make SDA decisions was extremely challenging while 48 per cent said it took at least six months to fill a single vacancy. The recent findings, by the Summer Foundation and Housing Hub, surveyed providers representing about half the total current value of the SDA market—approximately $1.5 billion.

“Any providers mobilising new tenancies for SDA participants [people with disability qualifying for specialist housing paid for by the National Disability Insurance Scheme] over the past 18 months would have experienced significant vacancies, especially those providing single residency high physical support (HPS) apartments,” AccessAccom’s managing director Matthew Valenti says.

On the cusp – What’s holding back SDA

Continue Reading on The Urban Developer

© Copyright Neena Bhandari. All rights reserved. Republication, copying or using information from neenabhandari.com content is expressly prohibited without the permission of the writer and the media outlet syndicating or publishing the article.

Aboriginal-driven research is a must for Indigenous say in disability policy, says John Gilroy

0 Comments read Disability, Health & Science, Indigenous, NDIS
Dr John Gilroy. Photo Credit: Supplied by JG.

By Neena Bhandari

Sydney, 04.01.2021 (Hireup): Aboriginal-owned and driven research is essential to enable Indigenous people to have a voice in disability policy, says John Gilroy, a Koori man from the Yuin nation. His lived experience of growing up with a significant speech impediment, linked to a chronic respiratory condition, has made him a passionate advocate of Aboriginal and disability rights.

He recommends the National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIA) should invest more resources into building and up-skilling the current National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) planning workforce and the Aboriginal community-controlled services sector.

“The NDIS is built on a white fella capitalist viewpoint of purchasing services and working on for-profit market-based philosophies. This goes against the grain of how many Aboriginal people want to engage with services and supports relating to their disabilities or being carers of people with a disability,” says Gilroy, associate professor and deputy director of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Research at the University of Sydney.

Continue reading →

Teach Indigenous disability units to change attitudes, says Scott Avery

0 Comments read Disability, Indigenous, NDIS
Dr Scott Avery. Photo Credit: Supplied.

By Neena Bhandari

Sydney, 14.12.2021 (Hireup): It was not until his mid-teens that Scott Avery was diagnosed with profound hearing impairment. He now uses a Cochlear implant and tried accessing the NDIS a few years ago, but was bogged down by the complexities and peculiarities of the scheme.

“I had to complete a Hearing Handicap Audit and basically disable myself to prove how “handicapped” I was by my hearing. This was too demeaning so I gave up after a few months,” says Avery, who is from the Worimi country in New South Wales.

He says, “I just wanted to talk with an Aboriginal person for my eligibility assessment because the `medical model of disability’ thinks we are all broken. It’s a modus operandi of `we’ll just fix you’ for a lot of government systems. This has a negative impact on people’s social and emotional well-being.”

Continue reading →