"Psychic healing" on the NDIS?

Add in "tarot cards", "crystal wand making", "runes", "chakra" and other alternative therapies - all apparently available - and you might be adding quite a bit to the $35.8bn bill for the National Disability Insurance Scheme. 

Does it pass the pub test? Almost certainly not. There was just one thing on the list of alternatives that I thought might have some real value for a very limited number of people. It was something that would also need to be very carefully handled by an expert - meditation.

Anyone who has tried, especially anyone who has tried and persisted and does meditate on a regular basis, will tell you that genuine meditation is not something that comes easily. I have no doubt at all there are people who find meditation helpful. Whether  guidance about it should be paid for through the NDIS is something else entirely. 

I do know one person who suffers from excruciatingly painful muscle spasms. He did get genuine help from a medically qualified person who teaches meditation techniques. It hasn't cured his condition, nothing will do that. What it has done is taught him how to handle the spasms and overcome them more quickly. He didn't get NDIS support for that. He sought it out for himself so he could go on working from home in his role as an accountant. 

All the other alternative therapies listed in the article in this morning's paper are not things I would want to access. I don't want to go to a "reading" of the tarot cards or surround myself with crystals. If other people want to do that it is entirely up to them but I do not believe the NDIS should be paying for it. 

The NDIS was supposed to be there to pay for the essentials of daily living. It is supposed to be for things which are "reasonable and necessary". They are supposed to relate to the person's disability and be of value for the money spent. They should be effective and enhance someone's life. 

Long before we had the NDIS there was a child in a school I worked in who was still living at home. Her mother had stopped trying to get her in and out of the bath alone. Discussions were had and a "bath seat" was designed. It was quite expensive. It seemed like a good idea and it was tried. It didn't work in the way which was intended. Fortunately it was not wasted. Further alterations were made and it was used by another family. Under the NDIS they might still be waiting for a bath seat that didn't work because it takes so long to get something like this approved and then made. It is also unlikely that it would have been passed on to someone else. 

The NDIS is simply not working the way it should be. Money is running out in places where it is genuinely needed for day-to-day care. It is why a mother well into her 80's is called up to say, "There is nobody here tonight qualified to feed your daughter. Can you come? We aren't allowed to do it." That happened to H... twice last week. Surely that is more important than "crystal wand making"? 

I want to believe in the NDIS but seeing people access "alternative therapies" makes that difficult.