The NDIS or National Disability

Insurance Scheme was supposed to provide extra assistance for those who need it most. 

Such a scheme was never going to be cheap but it should have been affordable. It should have been affordable because people with disabilities have the same right as anyone to a dignified life.

What has happened is what I feared would happen. The "squeaky wheels" have managed to get oiled and many others are getting nothing at all.

If you are a young person with even a mild disability and your parents are prepared to fight for you then you can get almost anything at all under this scheme.  

I have no arguments at all with speech therapy for a pre-school child if the assessment is that this will benefit the child in a way which will allow them to progress normally into the school system. That child may not appear to be "disabled" but it could be the means of preventing a much greater disability. It may mean the child starts school without any concerns. It's a good use of NDIS money but I am less sure of other things.

A child of my acquaintance has just been given a bicycle. It was given to him for the purposes of "socialisation". His family is well able to afford a new bike for him, several new bikes in fact. It just happens he has a mother who knows how to work the system. He has already had an i-pad and he gets ten hours a week of "tuition" which is really nothing more than child-minding. (He and his "carer" will ride their bikes in the local playground in the time he is supposed to be getting "tutoring".) It is said this child is "on the autism spectrum". I know him well enough to know that he is a little different but he is not, in the view of his teachers or myself, autistic. He is a "loner". He just doesn't like being with other people, especially other children. His school progress has been patchy but his achievements place him just above average on the NAPLAN tests. He is not "disabled". 

I am well aware that what I have said will not be popular with everyone. There are people who will understand I do not understand the term "autism". I think I do understand it. I have worked with autistic children. I have also worked with children who have related issues. Some of them have genuinely required help - and often not received enough or even any at all - others have not. At the same time there are too many children I know, or have known, who are not getting the help they need because we closed "special schools" and "integrated" the children who attended them into the mainstream. It doesn't always work.  

I have worked in special schools where there have been not just specialist teachers but speech pathologists, occupational therapists, physiotherapists, a psychologist, social workers and more. No, they are not cheap to provide but the results have often been outstanding. One school, long closed, produced five students who went on to university in the five years I was associated with it. One of them obtained a doctorate - to add to the doctorate obtained by a student who left the school two years before I worked there. There were also students who obtained certificates at other further education establishments. All but the most profoundly disabled obtained work in a wide variety of fields. They have been active in their communities. All of them say they could not have achieved as much if they had been to a mainstream school.

Unless the NDIS can provide the same level of assistance to children like this then it is failing and will continue to fail. Unless the proposed "review" of the NDIS can overcome these problems,unless they have the courage to remove funding from some and provide it to others then the system may even collapse completely. Children should not have to wait two or three years for a wheelchair or VOCA. A child should be able to have an assistance dog trained to alert adults to a medical emergency. 

I could add many more examples. I won't but will those responsible for the eventual review please ignore some of those squeaky wheels and look at the wheels which are not turning at all?