The NDIS feels like sanctioned theft

NDIS marketed as care allows predatory providers to exploit disabled people’s funds, safety and dignity, writes Vardit Leizer.

AUSTRALIA’S NATIONAL DISABILITY Insurance Scheme (NDIS) is often described as world-leading. For some of us, this feels more like confirmed theft.

Being on the NDIS sometimes feels like being robbed. It’s when people come to your home and leave with something that belongs to you; It’s something they never tell you they’re getting, but they feel like they’ve earned it. It feels like being targeted, hunted by predatory providers who sense vulnerability.

New to the NDIS? You probably don’t know the rules yet; an easy target. Psychosocial disability? Female? Old? Living alone? A beacon for predatory providers.

They catch the points where they can enter, reach and receive. And you will take and keep taking until one of two things happens: either you fix the problem, or the funding stops. Whichever comes first.

Many people are shocked to read what types of support are approved under the NDIS. There are people offering “viewing venues,” “discos,” “water sports,” and there are people without disability qualifications who provide these supports as registered providers for tens of thousands of dollars.

I watched tens of thousands of dollars disappear into “supports” that left me worse off than when I started.

Many people are shocked when these cases hit the news, are investigated, and the fraud is revealed to be too big to cover up. How can the NDIS confirm this? How could he allow this? What does any of this have to do with disability?

But the NDIS exists within its own domain, with its own language, jargon, rules and expectations, completely outside common sense. “Why”recovery coach“Why”innovative community engagement“? What makes an action an expression of the participant “?choice and control”?

Each of these terms is defined in loose and amorphous ways – without limits – according to the NDIS. If the provider documents something in an NDIS compliant manner, it becomes NDIS compliant. If a person claims to be his own “recovery coaching,“then they are.”Choice and control” could even be interpreted as the freedom to harm oneself or others if framed that way.

None of these have been meaningfully defined, constrained, or validated to operate in a way that is truly meaningful or truly serves people with disabilities.

For me, being on the NDIS sometimes feels like I’m being robbed because I have to take in people who are unsafe, foreign, unregulated and unemployed elsewhere. People who are unable or unwilling to find stable employment, dragged into disability support between jobs, divorces and mortgage payments.

They have no qualifications. There is no education. They charge the maximum rates allowed by the NDIS and sometimes try to charge more or double it. They break into my home, they know where I live, they invade my space, and they damage my already fragile mental health rather than helping it improve.

They always – always – ask for special conditions. They want me to change my needs to suit them. They want to work in ways that empower them. They want to go to places they enjoy. They suggest hiring people they like (their son, their boyfriend, their best friend).

They always see the path to a better life for themselves.

My recovery? Irrelevant.

The NDIS feels like I have been robbed of what little stability I have, what little hope I have, and the little corner of life I have created for myself – supportive people I trust, who tell me and others the truth, who believe in me and my recovery. It allows people who believe in only one currency (cash) to log in as quickly, easily and conveniently as possible.

There are notable support workers, peer workers, mental health workers and people who make this field promising. But until we address the massive level of fraud and its human impact, we are leaving our most vulnerable vulnerable to highway robberies.

They steal what is most precious to us: our sense of security of existence. They are taking our dignity.