What foundations?

Instead of building the foundations of our inclusion, recent decisions by governments have left disabled people adrift, yet again.

Every day for the last two weeks, I’ve had calls, emails and meetings with disabled people and our organisations across the country, all saying the same thing.

Stretched beyond their capacity, the elastic bands barely holding them together have finally snapped and broken.

State, territory and the Federal governments have all acted in ways that are the opposite to their rhetoric about change, about being different, about listening to us.

Over the last two years, the current Federal Government has asked our community to take a whole lot on faith, after telling us they were for real change and for a new beginning. 

We said the NDIS needs to be fixed, but do it with us. They said, yep, sure, here’s the NDIS Review, filled with people you trust.

We said organisations need long term sustainable funding. They said, sure, yep, do another round of submissions and we’re going to fix this.

We said disabled people live in poverty, and the current disability employment system is a farce and we’ve done all this work to build a better one. They said, yep, sure, totally taking that on board, but here’s another round of consultation where you can say it all again.

We said we poured our hearts and souls into the Disability Royal Commission and want the violence to stop. They said, sure, yep, listening very hard and thinking about what happens next.

We said that there had to be supports outside the NDIS and the NDIS Review agreed. They made promises and a National Cabinet Agreement was signed to deliver them. 

A year ago, I wrote about broken promises in the Federal Budget, and then this year’s Budget landed, and it became incredibly clear that there was again actually very little at all there in response to any of the promises made. No money, no investment, no engagement, no resources, no plan.

On top of all this has landed the new NDIS legislation, full of changes that no disabled person or disability organisation wanted or argued for, and little of the key elements from the NDIS Review.

So what were all those promises really worth? What was the point of all that consultation over the last two years if it was to be ignored?

The changes outlined in both the NDIS Review and the Disability Royal Commission are big, broad and potentially life changing for so many disabled people and their families. But the plan about how we are to get from here to there over the next five years is woefully short on details.

What we do know is that what the NDIS Review called foundational supports, targeted and general supports outside the NDIS, will possibly start in July 2025, with most to be delivered in the years after that.

These are the ones that all states and territories agreed to with the Federal Government last December via National Cabinet, which hasn’t stopped them making the kinds of noises about disabled peoples’ public services that we know so well.

These new supports really are the foundations for so much of the current changes, and are meant to be the downpayment of trust to the disability community we have been asking for. Without them, and without them being taken very bloody seriously, any other reform is just a cut of essential supports.

So what is the plan to both deliver on the promised foundations, and sustain our community and organisations long enough to be there to build them? Or is the plan to build them without us, without our expertise and knowledge, without our consent, without our involvement? It sure is starting to look like that.

The system in place for the last few years, to deliver services outside the NDIS, is called Information, Linkages and Capacity Building (ILC). Every few years, a number of grant rounds are held, where organisations compete for a finite pool of funding to do essential work such as peer support, regional services, independent information and capacity building.

I wrote last year about what these grants had meant for so many organisations, both good and bad.

The ILC program papered over the very real funding crisis for many disability organisations, caused by a refusal of the previous government to even index funding to cover costs, but at the same time, constrained what they could do by only granting funds for very specific functional projects.

These grant rounds for individual projects could never address the broader social changes that are need to ensure that disabled people are fully included, and the way this funding was designed and delivered meant that ‘much of ILC activity remains ‘band-aid’ measures that do little to address the ableism embedded across society.’ The research also found that this short term project based grant program was ‘viewed as ‘piecemeal’, ‘scattergun’ and patchy ‘jigsaw’ of funding that undermines the achievement of the ILC outcomes.’ One respondent said that “If you get a grant, you do your two-year work, you stop, you get another one a year later. All of that experience and good will is ... gone and you have to start again. That’s really disjointed - it’s just money down the toilet because you’ve got to start all over again”.

And this is exactly what has happened all over again.

Announced just over a week ago, over 100 organisations missed out on funding, many for existing, essential programs run by and for disabled people. 

In West Australia, South West Autism Network will shut down their information and referral service for autistic kids and their families, specialists in educations and one of the key groups that foundational supports are meant to help.

Developmental Disability WA will close their specialist supports for people with very complex support needs and their families, often the only place to get those answers to building a decent life in the community, outside of institutions.

Women with Disabilities Victoria will have to make over a third of their staff, all women with disability, redundant, and close their essential regional support program across Victoria. 

WDV CEO Nadia Mattiazzo has stated “I am devastated…speaking personally, and I think also from the rest of us at WDV, we will not let our rage at this situation abate. We will respond to this outrageous lack of understanding for who we are and what we do best.”

Community Disability Advocacy Hunter is facing the closure of one of the only deaf-blind peer group programs in the country, and the national advocacy organisation, DeafBlind Australia has lost all their funding.

The national network of capacity building organisations were not funded again, putting all their programs to support disabled people and families at serious risk.

This is being repeated in every state and territory, right at the same time that governments argue over the details of the proposed, almost mythical foundational supports. These actual real foundations, that disabled people have built over the last few years, are being ripped apart, with nothing to replace them, and no sign of anything on the horizon.

These organisations are also those closest to disabled people and families, because that is who built those very organisations. These are the ones that are answering questions, wading through the changes being announced, and figuring out what the impact of the reforms will be. These ones, the very ones that have been gutted, ignored and shattered.

There is no plan for what is to happen to disabled people and families who will no longer have these programs and services to turn to in the next one to two years, while those other foundations are being rebuilt.

Instead of understanding and including our expertise and knowledge, and using this as a bridge to better and more consistent foundational supports, all governments have left disabled people on very unstable ground.

From my browser tabs

• On NDIS and algorithms
• Support fundraisers from Gazans
• UN statement on the impact of war on disabled Palestinians
• The two days of Committee hearings on the NDIS legislation
• The historian Robin Eames has a workshop about LGBTIQA+ Disability history
• The inquiry into a human rights framework report has landed, recommending a human rights act
• What’s a foundational support? Let us know