Melbourne mother Mel Spencer’s three children are thriving since accessing NDIS support to manage autism and other conditions.
But she’s nervous about what the government’s plans to save $14.4 billion over four years will mean for her children.
The government unveiled the cost revision in Tuesday’s budget — NDIS Minister Bill Shorten said it would be achieved through two main changes to be included in legislation before the parliament. The disability community will be involved in co-design.
“Ninety-five per cent of our savings over the next four years will come from these two measures,” he said.
The first change would be to end automatic top-up payments for participants’ support plans. The second would change how budgets are set to account for the overall needs and costs of a participant’s support plan, rather than budgeting item by item.
The remainder would come for a range of other measures, including a further crackdown on fraud.
Plan inflation has already decreased from 11 per cent to 7.5 per cent excluding indexation.
Ms Spencer said the autism community was particularly concerned, with much of the recent discussion centring on whether young children with the condition may eventually lose access to the NDIS, in exchange for another, as yet developed program.
She said many in the community were so fearful of losing that access they were going without the support they were entitled to.
“I see so many people that should be on the scheme, but they’re too afraid because that’s what they’re hearing,” she said.
“It’s actually preventing them from trying to access the scheme.”
Autism Awareness Australia director Nicole Rogerson has criticised the lack of detail about the planned savings.
“My own community, they’re very concerned with hearing savings but with very little detail behind them so of course, that makes families panicked, worried about the services for their children, and rightfully so,” she said.
“Until we have more detail, people are just going to remain really worried.”
Achieving savings possible, but challenging
The Actuaries Institute’s Anthony Lowe, who was previously also the CEO of an NDIS service provider, said achieving the cost reduction was dependent on a series of factors.
“I don’t think that the government will be able to achieve the savings they’re talking about in the NDIS without getting the foundational supports up and running,” he said.
At December’s meeting of national cabinet, states and territories agreed to jointly design and fund foundational supports outside of the NDIS, potentially providing peer support, information and other programs through schools.
States and territories have been criticised for largely vacating the field in terms of providing disability support since the advent of the NDIS, with the details and funding of the new program still to be worked through.
Dr Lowe said other measures would also be needed to reach the 8 per cent growth target for the scheme by 2026.
“I think it’s going to be quite challenging to achieve that goal within that time frame,” he said.
“The government have not been very forthcoming on how much planning they’ve already done and what costings they’ve already done so it’s very difficult to know, but it seems, it seems to me at least quite a fast time frame.
“I think they’ll also have to take some pain from the disability community if they wish to achieve the cost savings that they’re looking for.”