Executive summary

In July 2016, the Ombudsman’s office commenced a standing inquiry under section 11(1)(e) of the Community Services (Complaints, Reviews and Monitoring) Act 1993 to examine and respond to allegations of abuse and neglect of adults with disability in community settings, such as the family home.

We started the inquiry:

To: office@williams.minister.nsw.gov.au

Dear Minister Williams

Thank you for your admission that some people are worse off with the NDIS (see https://www.2gb.com/minister-admits-ndis-is-leaving-some-families-worse-off/).

The Honourable Paul Fletcher MP

Minister for Families and Social Services

Dear The Honourable Mr Fletcher MP,

As Convenor of Autism Aspergers Advocacy Australia (known as A4), I write to request a meeting with you to discuss the needs of autistic Australians for Government services and supports.

Here is another report, this time from Queensland, describing some serious inadequacies of the NDIS with particular impact on autistic people ... though the report fails completely to mention autistic people. The report talks about people with impaired decision-making capacity; it mentions intellectual disability and brain injury, but does not mention autism spectrum disorder (ASD, which is the biggest distinct disability type in the NDIS).

Recommendations

The Public Trustee

We recommend that the Public Trustee of Queensland:

The difficulties for people with complex and challenging support needs to obtain adequate supports under the NDIS

The purpose of this report is to tell the stories of some of OPA’s clients who have complex and challenging support needs, and who are not seeing the benefits that the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) is intended to deliver.

The human impact and harm experienced by clients when they receive inadequate supports under the NDIS is significant and the costs to them for this failure, and to all of us, have been enormous.

The Joint Standing Committee on the NDIS reported on NDIS Market Readiness.

Basically, the Committee found that the disability sector is not “market ready” and the NDIA needs to do much more to ensure that the NDIS achieves its goals.

The report concludes:

Following is correspondence with the new NDIS Quality & Safeguards Commission. It shows this Commission:

Thank you for your email of 11 August 2018 to the former Minister for Social Services, the Hon Dan Tehan MP, about the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) and registered behavioural clinicians. Your correspondence has been referred to the National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIA) for reply. I apologise for the delay in responding.