The National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIA) allegedly told a 44-year-old man with a rare degenerative condition that it slashed his funding because “patients get better.”
According to a report by The West Australian, the man, named Jason, has been accessing the National Insurance Disability Scheme (NDIS) since 2018 to support multiple disabilities, including Rasmussen's disease, uncontrolled epilepsy, obesity, intellectual disability, and arthritis. In April 2021, the NDIA slashed Jason's funding plan by 20%, leaving him with limited support to live independently, manage his epilepsy, and engage in social community activities.
On Thursday, the NDIS participant's mother and full-time carer, Ruth Den Brinker, presented her submission to a senate committee examining the NDIA – claiming that an NDIA lawyer told her in 2021 that the agency will cut Jason's funding because “patients get better.”
“Miracles would be wonderful, but in the interim, we would appreciate a decent NDIS plan which will enhance Jason's quality of life,” she said, as reported by The West Australian. “Those thoughtless comments only exacerbate the decades of hurt already experienced by parents having to watch a formerly healthy child become severely and permanently disabled.”
Den Brinker said she and her family had to endure “insulting statements” from several NDIS assessors who neither she nor Jason had ever met, including one who asked the difference between physiotherapy and hydrotherapy.
Now, the family continues to fight for a return to Jason's original funding at an appeals tribunal, but they had to pay for legal representation out of pocket, risking Jason's services being cut off.
“These delays cause service interruptions or no service or therapy provision for Jason for weeks, which impacted his health and well-being,” Den Brinker said.
However, the appeals tribunal said Jason had not satisfactorily proved he needed to change his funds to the original amount.
The NDIA has been on the hot seat for months. Most recently, NDIS watchdog Deloitte Access Economics (Deloitte) claimed that the bottom 10% of NDIS providers allegedly paid their disability support workers less than the minimum hourly rate in 2020/21. Other NDIS participants also suffered from slash funding, with some fighting for their home.
