 So first of all thank you for making the time to come to today's session. It's a session that is targeted directly at people who are supporting people with a disability directly, you're the people out there that have relationships and contacts with the people that the National Disability Insurance scheme is all about. So thank you for making the time. I appreciate that many of you have come in your own free time, so that's a real show of your commitment to find out about this scheme and how you can assist the people you work with to know that it's coming and how to be prepared for it. Before we start, I'm Sarah King, I'm from the ACT NDIS Task Force. I'm joined by Judith Davis Lee, who is a director with the National Disability Insurance Agency, and the agency is the entity that will be running, managing, delivering the National Disability Scheme in Australia. In ACT, from 1 July this year, as it is throughout Australia. Before we start, I would just like to pay my respects to the traditional custodians of the land we're meeting on today, the Ngunnawal people. Pay my respects to their elders and leaders past and present, and acknowledge and welcome any Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders colleagues who are here today. So, I'd also like to thank the Disability Learning and Professional Development Network for putting on these sessions. There will be more sessions across the ACT for workers to find out about the National Disability Insurance Scheme. This is one of many more to come. I'd just like to say before we start, the reason it's so important that we have sessions for direct workers is that you are really the face of the service system. You are the people with whom people with a disability rely for information, not just support and services, but for information, and probably for a sense of optimism and confidence about what's coming. There has never been a larger, more significant change to the human service system in Australia. It's a monumental change, and there will be challenges, trials, tribulations through that journey. But it is, as you'll hear from Judith, one of the most important changes in order to ensure that people with a disability can lead good lives. At the end of the session, you'll have the opportunity to ask questions. If I could just ask you to check your telephones before we start, make sure they're switched off or on silent. And I'd just like to hand over to Judith Davis Lee now. Thank you. Hello everybody. It's lovely to see a full room of people, which means people's interest in what I'm going to talk to you today about is high. So thank you very much for coming. I really appreciate it. As Sarah said, I've been with the National Disability Insurance Agency for almost two years, so I joined them in June 2012 when it wasn't called the agency yet. It had a much longer name. I think it was the National Disability Insurance Scheme Launch Transition Agency, which, believe me, is a mouthful. So NDIA is much better. Today is the 1st of April, yeah? Well, I'm not here to play a practical joke. The NDIS really is coming to the ACT, and in fact, it's coming in three months time. Oh my God, three months time. There's an awful lot of work to do before we open the doors, but we are opening the doors on the 1st of July. We might go to the first slide. So all of you clearly have heard about the NDIS, and all of you, I'm sure in your own way, will know that this is something that has been a very, very long time coming for people with disability. More than decades, probably. But its most recent history began probably back in about 2008, when after the Rudd government first came to power, they made a commitment to hold a 2020 summit. Does anybody remember that? It was very interesting. It was a way of sort of generating big ideas for Australia's future. Well, I think it's safe to say that the NDIS was not just one of the ideas that came out of the summit, it was the big idea that was raised at the 2020 summit in 2008. In fact, it was put forward for consideration, among others, by Bruce Bonahady, who is now the chair of the NDIS Board. Bruce himself has two adult sons with severe cerebral palsy, has been a service provider, a philanthropist, a leader in the field, and so it was he proposing that this was an idea whose time had come. As a result of that idea, the Australian government then asked the Productivity Commission to conduct an inquiry into the existing care and support arrangements for people with disability across Australia. Again, I'm sure this is something that you're well aware of. The report is some 1,100 pages long, canvassed many thousands of views from people all across Australia. I think it received over a thousand written submissions, that's as well as the discussions and conversations they had with people across the country. And the resounding conclusion was indeed that we needed an NDIS because arrangements, depending on where you live, were either moderately okay or they were uniformly unfair or fragmented. And so this is one of the legacies of having a federal system where you have state governments with different arrangements in place across Australia. This is an attempt to create a single, nationally consistent, equitable, fair and sustaining scheme for people with disability to make sure that they can live a good life. So it is very new. It's taken quite a radical approach. An approach that I have to say has been trialled in pockets in some places and found to have been quite successful as a type of model. But it is a scheme that will tailor a person's supports to their individual needs. Now this is an enormous undertaking because it's such a radical shift away from the way things operate currently. So at the moment, in all jurisdictions across Australia, you have governments responding to pockets of need. A program is developed, a funding stream is applied, so many people, X number of, you know, sessions of service in this timeframe. Very rigid, rigid programmatic responses to identified need. This new system is going to unbundle all of those arrangements. It's going to unpick them all. Any program that currently devotes dollars to disability supports for people across Australia, eventually that money will be uncoupled from the program. All of that cash is going to flow into a single national bucket for disability support across Australia, which will then give people with disability the maximum flexibility in what they choose, in terms of their disability supports, who provides it, how it is provided. But an enormous change. I don't think I need to convince you about that. We're going to use an insurance approach. So what this really means is that vast amounts of data are going to be gathered over time. So we're very, very new. So we've just had nine months of operation since the first of July last year. If you want to think about it in terms of a lifetime, we're a baby. We've only just been born. I think by nine months, kids are generally crawling. So we're on our hands and knees. We're making our way forward, but clearly we're going to bump into things. We're going to get things wrong. We're going to have to learn to crawl. That cross pattern, that's the best way to do it. So we're moving towards that kind of goal, and hopefully by the end of the first year, like most toddlers will be on our feet. What the insurance approach does, though, is gather all of the data about the outcomes for every individual. This is what's most important. Obviously, all of us want the scheme to be sustainable over the long term. There's absolutely no point starting something like this and have it fail in two or three or four or five years. Data about the outcomes for individuals. In other words, the disability supports that people are receiving under the scheme and the difference that actually makes to their lives. In other words, the level of participation they're able to take on because of the supports they're getting under the scheme is going to be gathered absolutely carefully for every person, monitored regularly. We have a unit of scheme actuaries who've been employed to look just at those things. Over time we'll get a much, much better picture, an evidence base, if you like, about what does work for individuals in their individual circumstances, but also be able to aggregate that data up to say, for this group of people, this is what seems to work best. You can see all of that will feed into the future planning for the scheme. So choice and control is central and I'm pretty sure I don't need to convince any of you about the fundamental importance of individuals being able to exercise choice and control. This is a fundamental human right and yet the reality is that for people with disability, often they have not had the opportunity to exercise choice or to exercise control over the way they live their lives. And in this scheme that extends to choice and control over the types of supports they receive, how they receive them, who provides them and under what circumstances. The other fundamental difference, if we go back to that idea of a need being identified, a program being developed, these are very narrow strictures. So they are not needs-driven. All programs have a funding cap and once you get to that cap, nobody else can access the funding under that program. That's the way it works. This is not a capped scheme. So people are not given a ceiling to which they can buy services that they need. Their plan is constructed according to their individual circumstances, the individual disability support needs. And whatever the figure is that comes out at the end of that process, that is what that person is allocated under the scheme. That's a fundamental difference. It's delivered in local communities. Obviously you are part of that local community. So yay, you're in there, boots and all. And we are working towards national coverage. So again, I don't think I'm going to need to convince this audience about the importance of starting small, of getting it right, of making adjustments and improvements as we go along to make sure that by the time we get to that point where we're going to ramp up from the first three years of trial sites to a rollout that's going to go across the nation, we need to have the settings pretty well right. So these first three years are going to be crucial including the people who are the scheme architects, all the jurisdictions who've bought in, including the ACT, that we can roll it out in a way that's going to be there for the nation in decades to come and that is going to be sustainable. So this is the picture at the moment. We've got seven trial sites that are being established over the first three years. On the 1st of July last year, we opened our doors and we had four trial sites across seven locations. So they were in Tasmania where we have three shop fronts, the Barwin area of Victoria which is centered around Geelong. They opened with just an office in Geelong but they've now got an outposted office in Colac. So probably should be eight. Now anyway, we'll get to that in a minute. The Hunter in New South Wales which currently has an office in Charlestown and Charlestown sits right on the border of the Newcastle local government area and the Lake Macquarie government area so it's in between the first two lots of people who will come in. And in South Australia, it's the entire state of South Australia. Who's been to South Australia? It's enormous, isn't it? And the distances between places in South Australia are enormous. Nevertheless, they are doing the whole state for a child cohort so they're doing from birth up to 14 years. In Tasmania, it's 15 to 24 years so all those young people who are hitting those transition points about leaving school, thinking about post-school options going into employment. And in Barwin and Hunter, they're doing the entire age group who'll be eligible to access the scheme from birth up to 64. So you can see those three pieces will fit very nicely together. Now the ACT is a little bit different again so even though we're doing birth to 64 here commencing in July we are behaving in the ACT as if this is full scheme rollout. So we are commencing here because the intention is to bring in every single person with disability who will be able to access the scheme over a two-year period. So at the moment the estimates sit at about 5,000 people they estimate will be eligible to access the scheme and just how are we going to do that? We haven't quite got the answer in but you can imagine if we open the doors in our Northbourne Avenue office and in Emu Bank on the 1st of July and we get 2,500 people turn up that could be quite difficult. So there's a discussion going on at the moment between the ACT government and the Commonwealth about how exactly we're going to bring people in so we need an orderly progression of people into the scheme in the ACT and what I can tell you is based on the experience from the four trial sites that commenced last year that actually worked very well so they did it slightly differently in each place so sometimes it was about ages so in South Australia for example they started with the babies first bringing in subsequent two to three-year-olds and three to four then four to five they're doing six to 13 in the second year and so on in the Hunter it was a combination of where you lived so there are three local government areas involved so they said let's go with the Newcastle LGA first but there are some complicating overlays which had to do with which people are receiving help under which programs there in Barwon it was by program only so they said all the people who are receiving this support at the moment will transition you over yet but what I can tell you is it's worked quite well there was no riot on the 1st of July last year people knew when they were likely to be coming in so they'd had a letter saying this is when you're likely to come in so the same thing will happen here in the ACT probably the next time somebody from the agency comes to talk to a group like this we'll be able to give you more detail at the moment all I can tell you is the phasing that's how it's referred to the phasing is still being decided and so that'll be soonish we're very close to an agreement which is good WA also joins on the 1st of July this year that's going to be very interesting because the WA government is running its own NDIS-like trial it's called My Way and that's because WA government likes to do things their way but we will also be opening in the Perth Hills area of WA on the 1st of July and in the Northern Territory we're doing a tiny, tiny number of people in this vast area called the Barkley region I mean it's just huge peppered with tiny little remote Indigenous communities so that is going to be quite a challenge but you can see all of those bits of experience if you put them all together what you've got is something that should reflect diversity across the Australian landscape including how a scheme like this is possibly going to operate in a remote environment it's going to be very challenging so the scheme did start on the 1st of July last year that was so exciting our CEO David Bowen said if I have to stand some there just with a balloon that says NDIS we are opening on the 1st of July but in fact everything that we hoped would happen on the 1st of July did things have been going quite well so this scheme is underpinned by developments that happened probably a year and a half ago almost now so there was a Council of Australian Governments Agreement in December 2012 that seems like an awful long time ago but that was the foundational general, in principle agreement all jurisdictions across Australia saying yes we need this scheme and that of course came on the back of the Productivity Commission's report saying this is something that Australia needs to move towards now bilateral agreements between individual jurisdictions who were hosting a launch site and the Commonwealth Government was signed in April last year so you can see we're in April now so it's okay we haven't quite finished our arrangements for the ACT yet and for those jurisdictions who have already agreed that they will proceed to full scheme roll out based on the learnings from the trial so that is at the moment every single jurisdiction in Australia except for WA so they're the only ones who haven't signed a Heads of Agreement for full scheme roll out so here in the ACT in a sense we'll be ahead of the PAC because we'll get to the end of our trial period but in fact everybody who needs to access the scheme will have done that and I've mentioned those other arrangements in place the one thing I will say is before we opened the doors on the 1st of July in the trial sites last year we conducted a number of what we called site rehearsals where we actually bought people in who we suspected might be eligible kind of ran them through the process so it was a bit of a dry run to see how it all worked and that was tremendously instructive you can construct all your processes and say this is how it's going to work but until you get real people in there actually doing the processes you don't find out what could possibly go wrong and it's tempting to do that again this year so we might be in touch with you saying come and give us a run so I belong to the National Disability Insurance Agency when we pass the legislation for the scheme so we are supported by a legislative base that should give all of you some comfort I think so most programs are not necessarily supported by legislation the legislation tells us what we must do in what sort of timeframe for whom and how and it's supported by other things so you have the legislation itself and anybody who suffers from insomnia I just get a copy of the act and read it late at night you won't have any trouble sleeping like most legislation but it's supported by a set of rules which are much more lay language so for me because I have trouble reading legislation they make a lot more sense and the rules sort of flesh out at this conceptual level what the act is meant to do and then underneath the rules set a sit a sit sit a sit I'll just put my teeth back in sit a set of operational guidelines which are the much more detailed advice to our planners, our local area coordinators people working with the agency about operating practice all of that material is available on our website so all of this is completely transparent and if any of you are looking for it you'll find it very easily if you go to these section called about us and there's a section called legislation NDIS rules and so on so our role apart from actually delivering the scheme that is bringing people in getting them planning finalising plans getting them to service providers getting them going is also about building community awareness of disability so we're much more than fund holders planners, administrators so in every launch site we've got staff who's sole role sole I like this phrase because it's French and I can't speak French but raison d'etre isn't that a lovely phrase I mean reason for being is so I did that at a national level I've now transferred to the ACT trial site where I get to do a little bit of it which is good but there is also a director of engagement that's been recently employed who was in the ACT government so that's a really good link her name is Alice Tibbet so I don't know if any of you know her already but from now until the end of June and beyond she'll be out there conducting public forums just like this and there'll be a series of those as we move towards launch we obviously have a key role and a key interest in ensuring the financial sustainability of the scheme in a sense that's everybody's responsibility but there are people in the agency as I said in the actuarial unit whose absolute primary purpose is to make sure that things are running as well as they can this will be the first time by the time we get to full scheme roll out it will be the first time ever in the history of Australia and I don't think I'm wrong in saying this where we have a single body of data about people with significant and permanent disabilities and the effect or the outcomes of the supports that they're receiving on their lives so we've started collecting that data then we have a database that's collecting information about the people the over 4000 already who have come into the scheme and who have plans and we will continue to do this if any of you read even the executive summary of the productivity commissions report one of the key pieces of feedback they had from people with disabilities their families and carers was that people hated having to repeat their story over and over and over and over and over so every time somebody went to a new provider it meant almost inevitably starting from scratch and people get very tired of that and so with this system we will collect that information from people once where they have bodies of information sitting with other providers that they feel we need to have we can make arrangements to gather that information with people's consent but once we have it their story is there it is captured and then when they come in say they start off in the ACT and in three years time that person in the family decides to move to South Australia for example we will be able to just shift them across they'll contact the agency their information is there they don't have to start from scratch I mean this is one of the beauties of having something that will be a national scheme it will be portable in the long term once we've hit full scheme roll out and it will mean that person only needs to tell their story tell their story to us just one single time I will say however because this is interesting we heard that information many times even when we were in the lead up to launch myself and a couple of people from my team went round to each of the launch sites to do some co-design sessions with families and people with disability and even there they were saying I'm tired of telling people our stories but the thing is when people came in for their first planning session they were very keen to tell us their story even if it was only going to be that one time and maybe it was with the knowledge that having told us just that one time they didn't need to repeat the details again we will have a very strong role in developing enhancing the disability sector does anybody visit our website at least occasionally the NDIS website I'd encourage you to do so so ndis.gov.au is the address the reason I'm saying that is information is updated regularly and anything that's new will appear on the carousel so there's this shifting sort of set of headings up to the top right hand side now there have been some capability grants released just recently the funding has been announced for that so if any of you are working for a provider who think they might like to have a look at that that's open for a month so I'd just encourage you to go and have a look at that it's about building community capacity and capability about organisations that perhaps might like to set themselves up as a disability service organisation and we will have a role in undertaking research so we haven't quite commenced although we have commenced the arrangements for doing a formal evaluation because that's really important but in the longer term the data that's gathered is going to be this very very rich source of data for researchers both in the short and the long term so that will be very exciting too so progress to the end of February so this is pretty well up to date I don't have much figures because March only finished yesterday we've had 1,300,000 unique visitors to the website so that means actual individuals which is very good we get around 2,500 visits to the website every single day more than 5,500 people have actually visited our shopfronts, the seven that are open at the moment so these are people who didn't have appointments, these were people just coming in seeking information or whatever more than 7,500 access requests have been submitted so that's the formal mechanism for people to seek access to the scheme and I'll talk a bit about that later over 5,000 plans have now been completed so we're moving well towards the target for the first year which is to bring 9,000 people in and have them complete their plan so everybody's expecting we will hit that target and very comfortably to people who work for the agency the people who have come in and had their first or second or third planning session with the agency report a very high level of satisfaction with that interaction so we must be doing something right now this is a really important slide it looks very wordy but I'll talk you through it this gives you an idea well not an idea it gives you a summary of how things are changing between the current arrangements and how things are going to be in the future and for the ACT that's the very near future which is good so on the left you've got access criteria in other words people might access either a program or a source of funding or whatever under the former system that would vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction so even though you might have two very similar programs side by side the way that people got access to those could vary enormously you know just this patchwork quilt of arrangements all the way across Australia very confusing and particularly difficult if you had a person moving from one jurisdiction to another under the NDIS there is one nationally consistent set of criteria that allows people to access the scheme and it's set out in our legislation and then it's supported by the NDIS rule and then also supported by our operational guidelines choice and control under the former system again this varied from state to state as I said you had pockets of people who were receiving individual support packages but that is the exception not the rule and so most people have very little say over the supports they receive under the NDIS the individual is at the centre of this scheme absolutely the individual their carers and family sit right at the centre and they are the ones who have control over what they receive and how they receive it level of assistance almost always capped even with individual support programs there was often a cap on what people could receive but under this new scheme it's absolutely demand driven and funding well we've already talked about the thousands probably of individual programs identified need program a bit of money inflexibility you can only do this to so many people over a period of time that will all be gone now so everything will be demand driven oh no sorry funding so we'll have this single funding pool for the NDIS and the more cash we roll into that so once programs come to the end of their life the money that would have been devoted to that program will roll into the NDIS and eventually we'll just have a single funding pool for everybody who's able to access the scheme I won't go too much into this but there are principles and objects in the act they're probably worth reading they give effect to Australia's obligations United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disability and there are some of them there again I won't sort of go into those most of these will be like yeah absolutely nobody will want to argue against them but this is where I wanted to get to so the primary aim of the scheme is to increase participation for people with disability in all spheres of life however that might look for an individual to whatever they can bring to the table to the extent that they are able to do it we want to increase their participation this is also consistent with our obligations under the UN Convention the scheme design actually assumes that people with disability will participate to the extent that they are able increased economic participation because I'm sure all of you know a number of people with disability who would love to work if only there weren't so many barriers if only they could get the support that they need and desire but increased economic participation for any person always translates to better long term outcomes and the same is true of people with disability those higher participation rates as soon as you've got people with disability much more visible out there participating in whatever aspect of the community we're talking about permanently with the social constraints of disability the scheme is going to work very hard to ensure that other supports so beyond the disability specific supports that people need there are a whole host of other supports to which people with disability ought rightly to have access so I'm talking about mainstream supports now transport, accommodation health, education all of those things everybody has a right to assistance under those schemes anywhere in Australia people with disability often have less access simply because there is either nobody to advocate for them they don't know how to navigate the system or the system says oh it's too hard you know too hard is not going to be an excuse anymore so that's a big chunk of our work making sure those systems work as well for people with disability as they do for people without and the scheme will fund all of the reasonable and necessary disability supports that a person does need to achieve that participation so when you're thinking about what the intent of a person's plan is that's really what it is it's to increase participation yeah I've talked about some of this already so I'll just recap these are the three pillars that actually underpin the way that this scheme was designed so if you know about these things you have in your head really a framework for thinking about what this scheme is designed to do so there's the insurance approach which shares the costs of supporting people with disability across the entire community who pays tax okay if you pay tax you are contributing to the scheme it's not like a normal insurance scheme it's like a premium in a sense you are all paying your premium through the tax as you pay if any of you were kind of listening to what was happening in the lead-up to launch last year there was an amendment made to the Medicare Act which meant that the Medicare levy there's a proportion of the Medicare levy which has gone up and that money is devoted wholly and solely to the NDIS funding so all of us are that any of us might well need it in the future you just don't know so choice and control I've talked about that I don't need to say that again but that's in the middle and that's in the middle for a very good reason and on the other side is community and mainstream so this sits within a philosophy that says people with disability are as entitled as anyone else to access community and mainstream supports so accessing the scheme this will be a big interest to you so once we know the phasing which is still a mystery to Sarah and I but once we know the phasing the agency will write to and the ACT government may well as well write to people to let them know when they're likely to come into the scheme so they'll have a reasonable expectation about when they're likely to be able to phase into the scheme now you might have a question about well what happens to them in the meantime there is an agreement between all governments who are participating in the trials that existing government programs or continuity of support will continue for people up to the point they actually come in and have a plan so please don't be concerned that if you have people who you are caring for who you think may well be eligible their support will not fall away on the 1st of July so arrangements will stay in place until individuals actually come into the scheme so how do you find out so this is a good question how do you find out if somebody might be eligible you can go on to our website right now probably google a lot on your phone if you want to go on to our website right now and there is an electronic very simple form to fill in called My Access Checker so it's been set up for ACT residents so you can go in have a look at that put in a few questions which really talks about the impact of a person's disability on their daily functioning and at the end of that form which really literally only takes about 5 minutes to do because I did it for my son who has a permanent disability you will get a little sentence that says it seems like you might be able to access the scheme here is your reference number it will give you a 5 digit combination of numbers and letters reference number you need to keep that because that reference number attaches to the information that you have put in the electronic form and it will say please contact us after the 1st of July so the reason it says that is we don't still know who is actually going to come in on the 1st of July but nevertheless it's a useful exercise to go through so go on have a try even if you just make up a fictional person or somebody you've worked with in the past you'll get an idea of what that information is seeking but we have a wide gateway so how many of you have had experience in the past with programs that have had all these things that you need, all these hoops you have to jump through before you even get to the front door so you have to have a doctor's this and a blah that and a specialist this and an assessment this no, no you guys actually are part of our front door I don't know whether you knew that but anybody that you're working with that you suspect may be eligible for the scheme you can refer them to the scheme, you can sit with them and do the my access checker in your office or in their home if you want to if somebody is even just wanting to chat to somebody to have kind of a preliminary discussion with somebody about what do I do you can do that so you actually are part of our front door and as such because you're in direct contact with people with disability you are going to be very important in the scheme of things so ACT residents oh that says ACT residents that should say ACT and as I said before there will be a gradual intake just an orderly progression to make sure we bring everybody in in a timely way this is the skeleton the sort of core of what the disability requirements are so this is also really important in order for somebody to access the scheme and I'm going to talk just about the ACT now people will need to be aged under 65 so that's really key they'll need to be living residing in the ACT before or on the 1st of July so you can't just move in on the 3rd of July and say I'm here I think you'll find most of your clients are already here anyway you have to have a permanent disability so we'll come back to that in a minute because some of you might be wondering what about people with psychiatric illness where they're sick sometimes and not but I'll talk about it in a minute so a permanent disability and the disability must have a significant impact on the way a person lives their everyday life so I'll use my son as an example because he has a permanent disability he has something called velocardiofacial syndrome you heard of that? No, most people haven't so it's a chromosomal disorder but like many of those disorders it's a spectrum disorder and some children are very very significantly impacted others like my son are more at the mild end so his main effect is a mild intellectual disability and he for example has a terrible sense of direction among other things but he does need help with some things I doubt that he's going to be able to access support under the scheme but it is permanent so it needs to have a big impact on your everyday life and your ability to participate and you are going to need supports for the rest of your life we'll talk about early intervention in a minute because it does slightly alter the picture here because you can imagine if somebody has either been newly diagnosed has just had an accident or an injury that's caused what's likely to be a permanent disability by bringing in early intervention immediately you may be able to actually reduce the amount of support that somebody might need over their lifetime so that's got a really important place in this scheme and in fact there are two ways if you like into the scheme there are people who've got a stable permanent disability that has a significant impact they will come in but people who've either been newly diagnosed or have newly acquired a disability can come in under the early intervention requirements I won't go through that that's a pretty neat thing so before I just get on to this I'm just going to mention mental illness because mental illness is mental illness can be significant and it can be permanent and perhaps some of you have clients that you help who maybe have a mental illness in the ACT it's an area of particular interest I would say we're interested in helping people where we can in the scheme but you would all be aware that for some significant mental illnesses or psychosocial disabilities it's also called they are episodic so people certainly have a diagnosis that will stay with them for life but they may be ill for periods of time and then they'll have a period of recovery where they are not so ill so you know can the scheme manage this I'm confident that we can planning an assessment process is flexible enough so that if a person comes in at a point in their lives where they are not so ill but the scheme gets to know them records them at a point where they are ill help could be activated very quickly and if you think about that in terms of other people who might have a progressive or degenerative disability so say motor neurone disease might be a good example so people's needs for support are going to increase over time so there's no cure for that and people generally will get worse over time as persons need increases for disability support they need only contact their planner and make a subsequent appointment and further supports can be arranged the scheme is designed to be that flexible for most people they will have a default review date of 12 months so this is where their disability is stable they pretty well know what they need etc but if anything happens before that 12 months is up people can just simply phone up yeah that's right so it's designed to be like that so this is the three chunks of the things that you will find in a plan there is a lot of concentration and emphasis on what people's goals are so I don't doubt that if you tried to have a conversation with some of your clients about goals they possibly wouldn't know what you're even talking about because people with disability have had to struggle so hard to get the support that they need and are often making do with much less than they need it's very difficult for people to think beyond next week or next month this is a scheme that's actually encouraging people to think about their long term goals and this is something that people with disability are a bit of trouble getting their heads around so we're not just talking about your needs today or next week or next month what would you like to be doing in next year or the year after or in five years so the experience in the four trial sites today is that this has been the hardest thing for people to tackle it's meant that plan completion rates have taken longer because people have needed time to think about their goals they've sometimes needed assistance to think about their goals what is a goal well it's something achievable that you want that's what a goal is but it has to be achievable and it has to be something that you want and so there's been a bit of work going into our trial sites now with people who we know will come into the scheme to actually to get them to think about that in a bit more detail and so they're a bit prepared when they come in to have their first planning conversation and there's been a bit of work sponsored by the ACT government around that very thing around helping people to think more carefully about what it is they want to do and we'll continue to do that so with each lot of people who are coming in I don't know how many more of those capacity building workshops yeah so probably a few more that you can around but we'll continue to look on how we need to roll it out that's right and we'll be looking at needs that are in the ACT so again needs are varied across trial sites if you think about the South Australian context where we've had very young children coming in first as it turned out that was quite difficult because parents are often dealing with the grief of having a newly diagnosed child there's often a lot of medical intervention that happens in those early days to get the child well and so it wasn't the right time for them to be coming in for child's long term goals or even to be thinking about a plan they're just dealing with the day to day the second part is the supports that people might already be receiving and these are the informal unpaid support so supports provided by community, by mainstream by families, carers relatives, you know circles of support etc all of those get set out in the plan and then the third part is the actual NDIS funded supports and people will have a budget they'll know exactly what they're up for I won't say much more about this except these are really important these are really important it goes back to that point I was trying to make before about this is everybody's responsibility it's not just the NDIA it's everybody's responsibility and in terms of carers because I'm sure many of you will also be connected with families and carers of people with disability have often borne the brunt of supporting that person often over a lifetime we know we've got quite a lot of elderly carers in the AC2 who are very concerned about what this scheme is going to mean for their child their son or daughter and there is a component of the planning where parents can have a separate conversation with the planner so although the intent is always to involve the person with disability in everything nothing about us without us I think is what they say but there obviously will be a place for planners to have a separate conversation with carers or parents if that's appropriate we want to make sure that carers are supported in their in their role and so while we wouldn't directly fund a carer for you know X or Y we can put supports in a plan that will make sure that carers get a break from their caring duties that's always been called respite in the past I don't know why that term's necessarily fallen out of favour but nobody seems to like it anymore I mean in many cases it can be a break for the person with disability as well as the parent or carer but those kind of breaks but the other thing it can include is referral to other agencies for support outside the NDIA and it can also include paying for training courses so there obviously will be a place for carers needing to do X or Y to increase their capacity to care for the person and the NDIA can pay for that that's not the extent of it you can read about that rule on the NDIS website so learning is going to be absolutely crucial so we like to think of ourselves as a learning organisation you know learning that's based on experience will absolutely lead to improvement I think that's the only way we can do it we're very open to feedback so at the moment we've got several mechanisms that people can use to give us feedback each of the trial sites has its own mechanism for receiving feedback from their participants, from carers, from family from the general public as well as us having a national way of collecting that we have a 1-800 number that operates every day of the week except not Saturdays and Sundays sorry I shouldn't tell you that operates every day but I think it's 8 to 8 8am to 8pm to take into account the WA trial sites starting in July you can ring them up and give them feedback there are complaints forms on the website that you can fill in if you've got a complaint and if you've got something nice to say of course we'd like to hear about that too so this is really important for you I'm not sure about the extent to which the ACT will necessarily reflect this experience from our existing trial sites because based on the feedback and the early trends from the first six months of operation we've made some adjustments already to our processes and systems to make things easier so clearly expectations about the scheme and what it will deliver are very high and they are high everywhere not just in the disability community but in the community generally I think and this is another area where support workers are going to be just so important so you have direct access to people who are likely to enter the scheme managing people's expectations is going to be really important so by educating yourself about the scheme by knowing that it's permanent disability that has a significant impact that it's about increasing participation it's not about going to the moon it's about increasing participation in the community it's about to manage expectations for scheme participants we've had a lot more access requests come in than we anticipated and the time taken to finalise plans has been longer than expected and that's going back to those complicating factors like in South Australia but mainly it has been around the fact that people have needed much much longer to think about their goals and to unpack their goals and the number of people entering the scheme until the end of December was lower than expected but as I say since then there's been a real pickup in the number of plans being completed and both participants and staff have identified a number of areas where things could have been improved and in fact those improvements have been made so to be successful these are the things that we and I mean collectively we the royal we, that's everybody needs to keep in mind those three pillars need to be kept insurance approach, choice and control community and mainstream we need to ensure that the funding for the scheme is sustainable so there's been a funding envelope identified by the time we get to full scheme rollout which is $22 billion a year it's a lot of money you could have a lot of trips to Disneyland for that but it is a lot of money it's about a doubling of what currently goes into the disability sector now so certainly there will be a lot more funding available and that's good news but it also means that we need to keep an eye on making sure we're delivering the scheme within that funding envelope and that's what our scheme actuaries will be doing we need to make sure that the delivery is efficient and effective and again you know in the ACT we might come up against things that we haven't already uncovered in the existing trial sites and be able to make improvements here that means that the process is even more streamlined for people with disability I certainly hope so and it has to improve outcomes it has to if it doesn't we've all failed you know, we've all failed so this is what's happened so far there's been a stronger emphasis on the evidence based approach for change we've streamlined the process for determining whether somebody might be able to access the scheme and that's made a big difference there's much better guidance for our decision makers so in terms of who are the decision makers in the agency about what a person gets and so on it's our planners so we have people who have the delegated authority from the CEO to make decisions about what somebody can have in their plan much better communication I hope with the community so that they understand what reasonable and necessary means and we're streamlining our admin and plan implementation to reduce the burden on NDIA staff we're building sector capacity I won't go into all of this you can find it on the website we ran a round called practical design fund in at the beginning I think end of 2012 and all of the projects that have been finalised you can find them on the website if you're interested to see what they came up with we had a conference last year that's old news nearly a year ago and sector development fund and this is where the capacity building strategy grants come in so I mentioned them earlier worth going on the website to have a look at those and transition will be gradual so there'll be this gradual transition I'm not exactly sure how it's almost like a magic box at the moment but just reassure you next time we come back we'll be able to tell you all about that wide gateway so I mentioned the web call centre the 1800 number the shopfronts anybody can turn up to a regional shopfront at any time so once the doors open on the 1st of July here you're very welcome just to come in and visit us there are information products being developed now for our ACT audiences and we don't just print them in hard copy everything also goes up on the web so if you were ever looking for a copy of something you could just go to the web and print one off from there we'll have products going out to our prospective participants once our phasing is known and we are working on a planning kit and a plan implementation kit for people who become participants in the scheme there's still quite a bit of work to do I try not to think about it I think just get through today it'll be fine but as I said before there'll be a continual rolling program of community engagement so just look out for that again it'll all be on the website the schedules if any of you are signed up to the newsletter so it's free an electronic newsletter if you haven't go to our website and sign up for that there'll be a gradual movement of national office staff from Canberra to Geelong by the end of June so obviously the ACT trial staff are staying here because we need to be on the ground but almost everybody else is going to national office in Geelong we're preparing for that formal evaluation an external independently conducted evaluation of the scheme that will be starting soon and this is part of our preparation of people and organisations in the ACT for 2014 and that's probably as much as I wanted to say I could keep going but you know you might have some questions yes I've been wondering all throughout because I work for disability disability assistance and we're a support organisation I know there are NGOs and I know there are people in the community who would like to access the support system who aren't currently who aren't currently yes are they going to be preference is there any strategy for the people who are in support are they going to be put on the back burner for that phasing discussion that I was mentioning before so yes oh sorry so the question was what happens with people who are not currently receiving any government funded supports and I'm sure you all know people like that I can only speak about the experience in the trial sites to date so absolutely that's recognised there'll be a component of people in the ACT because I'll meet the access requirements who are not currently receiving any government funded supports so they've been referred to in the other trial sites as new clients only because they're not currently receiving any government funded supports I don't know exactly what's going to happen in the ACT they will be able to access the scheme there's nothing that will prevent them from doing that but exactly how and when they will be phased in here I don't know in the other trial sites anybody who was currently receiving support from any government funded scheme we could identify those people either directly or through their current providers and so we were able to get in contact with them but of course the people we don't know we don't know and so if you know anybody like that tell them to contact the agency after the 1st of July tell them to go to the website do them myaccesschecker and if you just say to them look they'll be in but we should know that very soon in the other trial sites what they did was allow people who were new clients to contact the agency at any time so provided they were in the trial site they were living there they met the access requirements they could contact the agency at any time yes I've got two questions my first question is about is are other supports like the disability pension all of those kinds of support will they be affected by NDIS ok so the question was will other forms of support like the disability support pension better start and the HACWA funding so I used to actually I started the better start program don't hit me but I implemented that program so they're two very different things I want to ask the DSP first I want you to hear this message once only the DSP is not affected by the NDIS and the reason is the disability support pension is income support it's a completely different category of support to support that people get under the NDIS the NDIS is about disability supports to increase participation it's not about paying for rent or food or any of normal expenses of daily living which is what the DSP is for so anybody who's on a DSP they need fear not it won't be affected at all by them becoming a participant that's a really important point exactly as they do now they will continue to get their DSP that is their income the other one helping children with autism and the better start programs one of the programs identified as in scope so there's another bit of jargon for you an in scope disability program all jurisdictions went through a process of identifying every funding stream that was disability support and there's a long list for each jurisdiction the ACT went through the same kind of process the intention is eventually that all of those funding sources will roll into the NDIS but it's happening in a gradual way so obviously you just can't unpick all of those arrangements immediately some of you will work for providers for example who are block grant funded so in the other jurisdictions it wasn't possible to just simply undo all of those arrangements for the 1st of July some people were contracted for example till end of June 2015 so you can't just say sorry guys we're ripping the money off you it's not a good thing in South Australia which is probably the best example because they're dealing with children in that age group right now as parents have had their planning conversation with the agency they lose access to better start and helping children with autism which makes sense because NDIS will provide the disability supports that that child will need so you know when you were talking about potentially the need for support increasing so when there are situations that mean that the disability and ageing supports kind of meet is that distinguished I'm not sure I understand the question I'm thinking of say someone with Down syndrome for example where perhaps the incidence of Alzheimer's or something like that may increase those supports related to the onset of Alzheimer's is that distinguished separately from the disability probably not I mean that would be just another thread to that persons level of disability so if they're already a participant in the scheme additional disability supports because of early onset Alzheimer's or whatever that could be part of their plan yes that's right I mean there is a distinction I need to be a bit careful here because I'm not a doctor there is a distinction between supports provided through the health system which are about medical complaints that need medical treatment visit to doctors hospital admissions that kind of thing which should rightly be paid for the health system but anything else which is about supporting that person to participate to go to work to be at home to do the shopping whatever that's the NDIS's responsibility so there is a rule called support for participants which is worth looking at because you can understand there are a number of those interfaces where there needs to be some discussion in every jurisdiction about how that will actually operate not necessarily black and white but anything that had an impact on their level of disability I'm sure would be managed as part of their plan yeah so you had a question and then we'll go you and then you I'm just thinking in my mind about insurance in my mind my insurance covers certain things certain things and the way it works is that if I have an issue and I go see a doctor and I get an invoice or receipt yes yeah partially covered and then you pay the gap so with the NDIS the person then goes to the planner they are suggested I mean they come up with a plan and they are allocated a certain amount of funding now that's a big bunch of money say it's $35,000 is that for the year is that for those things that they've identified that they want do you go back and say look this is not working for me or I've finished that I need is that also that still needs to be worked out no it's an insurance model it's an insurance model that's right but it's an uncapped scheme so the question was a person goes along they get a plan they get a certain amount of money allocated is that annually what happens if they spend it faster than the year what happens if they need more would they be the main points and what happens if they want something and it's much more expensive I think was the other thing I was reading into there so let's just look at that so the plan is constructed on a person's anticipated disability support needs usually over a 12 month period usually but it can be a shorter period than that and a review date could be built in earlier if that was felt that that was necessary so normally that money would be supports required by that person for an annual period yep if the person is self managing their funding at the moment only about 10% of people choose to actually actively manage their funds themselves can you imagine the burden I wouldn't want to do it but say they were managing their 35,000 they don't get $35,000 paid in one go it's worked out between the planner and the person how often they get paid generally I think it's about monthly so they'll get an allocation monthly and that's to pay for their supports for that month if they don't spend that money that money gets rolled into the next allocation so if you don't spend it like there's no need to save I mean this is another message to get out there you don't need to hoard your disability support money because you think you might like to do something next month you need to actually think about what you're going to need by month for people who are not self managing what happens is the provider invoices the agency directly for the supports that are providing so they never see the money they just get the supports the provider accesses through the provider portal and they get paid within a couple of days of submitting the invoice but the people can still go into their plan and see what's been provided by whom and you know what the cost was in terms of the way the pricing structures worked we had people working in every jurisdiction to kind of come up with what were the prices being paid locally so in fact they're slightly different in every jurisdiction we didn't want to disturb any local markets we wanted to make sure that people were being paid properly for the supports that they were receiving so the plans are calculated on that and if a person got halfway through the month so they were self managing and they'd spent all their money that would be picked up very quickly and we'd need to work with them to make sure that you know their plan did fit what they needed and maybe it did need some, it does need some adjustment so in a sense there's enough flexibility in the scheme to make sure that people's needs are being met the plans will match their needs the payments that they're getting should actually match the supports that they're receiving and somebody is looking at that data this is who would want to be an actuary honest to God but that's what they're looking at all the time to make sure that plans, supports in there, dollars going out are all lining up in cases where people want something that say I'll use a frivolous example say somebody wanted a platinum plated turbo charged wheelchair if there even is such a thing when somebody needs a really expensive piece of equipment or a very unusual support or maybe something that's innovative or new or hasn't been tried before what's called a benchmark price will go into their plan so that goes in as a benchmark price and then quotes will be sought so we're talking about vehicle modifications home modifications, very expensive pieces of equipment and the prices will come back and say the person that comes back this one's really good and this is what we'll pay if the person wants the next one up and they're determined to have that they can pay the difference just as you would with other things it could apply to services I just don't know of any instances where that has happened but it's possible that that could happen if somebody really wanted a triple A platinum plated service for something and they could justify that that's what they needed and they're happy to pay whatever the premium is, that's right I just can't give you an example but I can't see that that wouldn't be something that wouldn't be considered so we're going here and then here for learning reasons why did you cut off why did you cut off assistance at age 65 I'll talk about that number two, you have, I can think of at least maybe about three people who in accommodation support are really getting quite a bit of money who are already heading into the 65 I think they're also running into dementia because of the condition so what happened thirdly, is it right to say the NDIS agency actually targeting the newer people who have had no support at all or are you still looking at those who are having some privilege in the accommodation support does it make sense yes it does, so the question was why does it cut off at 65 so I'll start with that one that's a policy decision about this scheme really being for people who are not aged and so we have an aged care system that kicks in when people turn 65 but the very important thing for you, all of you to know is if any of your participants under 65 come into the scheme when they get to 65 they can choose to remain in the NDIS or remain a participant in the scheme or to transition to the aged care system so once you're in that choice is there once they turn 65 in a sense it is about managing those boundaries, you know we are again that's one of those interface issues so when you're 65, if you need it you can enter the aged care system you go into residential aged care if that's what you need so there's no point having two systems running parallel but if you've got somebody in the scheme under 65 who's quite well, who doesn't need that you know they can choose to remain in the scheme the second one was about people in residential aged care who are coming up to 65 who are in supported accommodation who are coming up to 65 so again that is part of that phasing issue clearly the ACT government is aware that there are some people coming up to 65 and the agreement might be beneficial to come into the scheme so I know that that is being thought about and that's probably as much as I can say about that and the third thing was no I can't remember are there any agencies looking at new people, the new faces who have never had any kind of support which are quite plentiful in the agency I understand or are they still when concentrating on people who have got some benefits that have been put to community participation and means free and again I can't answer that at the moment so I think I talked about the trial side experience so far so anybody who fell into that category of not receiving any support they could contact the agency the moment the 1st of July clicked over and they could enter the scheme but in the ACT that phasing is still to be determined but there's another question I can hear which is about the importance of connecting people not just to disability supports but also to those other things and so you will get a certain proportion of people coming in who certainly have a permanent disability whose impact of the disability is certainly significant but who might not need very much and it might be much more about connecting them in a better, more effective and sustainable way to community and then there are other extreme supports rather than funded supports at this one Yeah, I'll just, quick question does the scheme cover illnesses such as cancer things like that when they're short or long term So this is that interface issue so the question was does NDIS cover cancer and illnesses like that and the answer is no and the reason is that again we have a health condition that's managed largely in the health sector even though it can have a disabling effect it's still really about managing that condition in the health sector and look, again, it's not all black and white there might be some instances where it's a combination of disability and a medical condition but our planners are going to they'll look at all of that Sorry and you had a question One was a means testing It's not means tested How much money? Not means testing The other one was the mobility allowance Now mobility allowance was one of those in-scope programs so one of those programs it's a federal program mobility allowance it was identified as an in-scope program which means that eventually all of that money will roll into the NDIS for people who are currently receiving it they'll continue to receive it until the point they transition into the scheme and then it's taken care of in their support plan Thank you Was the concern that a lot of us have We have someone who is actually over 65 they've agreed to keep funding here as through community access program but with the NDIS if he can't access that because of his age we just don't know where to find community access for him age care a lot of the programs are for elderly people they all are of course but his disability can make him quite disruptive so they really don't need they just don't worry they won't have him in their program So again I come back to this agreement between all governments about continuity of support he won't be the only person who is currently receiving disability supports who won't be able to access the scheme and governments have agreed that where that's the case they will continue to provide continuity of support for people like that Oh okay Yep Now, who was next? Is there a list of in-scope programs? Yes there is Well there was a whole list of all of the in-scope programs I don't know, have you published your list? No For the ACT? No, they're a national one So on the COAG website are all the inter-governmental agreements so that identification of in-scope programs happened as part of that inter-governmental agreement so you can find the list there Yes Are there some political reckonings about many care being privatised? Would that have any impact? No, it shouldn't Medibank private No, that's a different thing altogether People sign up to that privately anyway, it doesn't affect Medicare itself, it's nothing to do with it You can just forget about worrying about that one Yes What about those people who are currently funded through a block program? Yes But then when it comes to the NDIS they may not be eligible to access the NDIS Again coming back to that idea of continuity of support there will be people that you work with who possibly will not be able to access the scheme and all governments have agreed where supports are being provided to somebody who's not then able to access the they can continue to access the supports they're receiving now Block funding programs Do you know how you're saying that block funding programs are going to be phased? Eventually, in the longer term What happens then? I do Yes, there are Probably particularly around some mental health stuff as well What happens there? Block funding is going to be Yes, eventually It is true, so for most programs where the funding is provided through block grant funding, most of that will be unpicked, but what we don't know in the ACT is really what the environment is going to look like here in the longer term and all jurisdictions have got an eye to the fact that, look, there might be a case in some instances for some programs still to be block funded because each person who's a participant in that program takes a tiny, tiny slice of it, it might not make sense to then make that an individual support that's included in their plan But this is something that we'll be looking at very carefully over the next couple of years, particularly in the ACT How will you identify those people? Well, that's a good question I think that the people who are currently in block funding don't fit, but would really like to continue with that Well, a couple of ways I can think of, so they might come into the shop from they might do the My Access Checker and find that they're not able to access the scheme but there is an area of concentration which is those people who have disabilities who are not able to access the scheme In other words, it's not permanent and or it's not significant enough or they don't meet the early intervention requirements and some support can still be provided to those people It's been called Tier 2 up until now, it's a horrible term but you know, people with disability who don't meet the access requirements and so just exactly how that will work in the longer term, I don't know Can I just add something there One of the things about the ACT is it's really a very small community We're talking about 65 or so specialist disability services that are currently working with people with disability or psychosocial disability that are likely to be impacted and phase into the national disability insurance scheme You know the people that you're working with your managers know the people that your organisation is working with better than anybody else We're going to know if people are phasing in we'll be able to say exactly who will phase in at what point your organisations will know that information In the next few weeks you'll be able to see exactly who and how and when you're working with you with your organisations to enable that to happen as smoothly as possible So it is a good thing we're a small community if there are five or six people for example in a particular program that aren't going to move over then we need to work with your organisation to ensure that there is that continuity of support Yes I'm just wondering for some clients from our organisation at the moment and because we have government funding because they don't have independent funding If they're not eligible for the NDIS will they still get service Yes So I don't know exactly where the money is going to come from I'm going to buy a lot of technology I don't know exactly because those arrangements are still being worked at but that is essentially the same question as I've had a few times now about continuity of support There is no doubt that a proportion of the people you work with will not be able to access the scheme because they won't meet the access requirements but all governments do recognise this all of them have said that they are absolutely committed to provide continuity of support whatever that looks like So those discussions are happening now with the ACT What I can tell you is it hasn't proved to be too much of a problem anywhere else So that to me is a good sign It seems to me we are targeting the people we ought to be targeting and it just doesn't seem to have been a problem across the existing sites And the second question is some clients they receive service from different organisations like organisation and funds Do you apply for funding for NDIS? Who will help them How to apply When they apply No, no, no, no This is one of the big things So yes in the past it meant you applied here and you got a little bit of this and you applied here and you got a little bit of this No, no more You come to the NDIS your package of supports is constructed for people who work for the agency will connect you with providers if you've not previously been connected with them Or if you want to stay with the same providers because you're happy with what they're providing and how they're providing it that is also possible But it's a single application form a single plan a single conduit Does that mean clients need to apply for funding with their family's help Who is the provider and the planner you mean in the past Who is the planner Only the planner with your organisation Yes, yes With the NDIA Does that mean like as a service provider we need to help clients to apply for funding Do we need to have a big meeting with all the service providers who this does No So essentially will either be the person themselves who is applying for access to the scheme Families and carers are going to be in there of course for many people and probably a lesser proportion will have no significant person in their lives to help them In that case it could be a service provider Essentially it's up to the person themselves So whoever that person wants to help them with the process and to help them with the planning process it's open to them People have had advocates you know formal advocates come with them they've had a nominee or a guardian you know through that process The Yes Yes Yes Yes It's really hard Yes indeed And for those very rare instances where you might have a client who has no other significant person in their life under our legislation the NDIA can appoint a nominee on their behalf so we also have that as a possibility Yes When someone goes on and does the checker Does that It says whether they are whether they are Does that trigger the department or the Does that trigger them to send them a letter or just give them the reference number No it's a bit more complicated So Once we've got the phasing Once we know what the phasing is the messages on the My Access Checker will be slightly altered so that people will get a much better sense of when they're likely to come in Well it just says contact us after the 1st of July and as I said it generates a unique reference number and once that's entered in after the 1st of July it pulls up the information that person has provided that's why it's important to keep it But look if you lose it doesn't matter you can do it again Post 1 July Yes it probably will It might say contact the 1-800 number to make an appointment for example which is what happens in some of the other trial sites for the moment it is But remember I said once we know with some reliable certainty who is coming in in what order we will write to them directly So they'll have that contact as well Yes Okay Okay all right Can I ask about the goals Do you have a client that comes in to do their planning who says my goal is to go on a world cruise Yeah great But they don't acknowledge that they can't get out of bed or they can't shower or whatever But their argument that's their goal Right that sounds very tricky Yeah But it possibly can happen Possibly can happen because their goals are very different to the practicalities Indeed yeah And this in a sense comes back to what I think what I was trying to say before but probably didn't say very well the whole issue about goal setting is quite problematic for people with disabilities so that to me is like a flight of fancy almost you know I'd like to go on a world cruise The steps between where that person is now and getting to that goal seem very long at least to me even for me thinking about going on a world cruise is a very long distant goal So doing some pre-planning with families and participants well before they get to the first planning session is our goal so that people understand what a goal is and how it's achievable and understanding the steps and what it is the agency can actually provide to people to help them achieve their goals is going to be very important I'm just wondering about the how well the plan is actually get to know the people the interviews done at home because they can be absolutely so I didn't say that before although we've got shop fronts our planners spend 70 to 80% of their time out of the office very different very very different I agree no that's exactly right so most people prefer to have their planning and assessment conversations off-site which is absolutely fine some people like to come in because it gives them a break from the rest of their world but you know if people want to have their planning and assessment conversations in a coffee shop or local library or whatever it's all fine just going on a little bit from that question my question is around will there be some kind of registration process for service providers to kind of regulate so I imagine there could be the potential for there to be some flooding some snake oil salesman maybe and so how can I as a particular company plan is around so yes providers who want to connect with NDIA participants who are not self managing so people who are self managing can really buy their services from anywhere they choose but as I said the majority of people up to 90% are choosing to allow the NDIA to manage their resources which is much less burdensome on them and that means we have to have a process of registering and being able to say yes this is a legitimate provider so in the other sites I think the registration process opened in about early May which was very late but we're hoping to open it a bit sooner in the ACT there is a process for the moment in each of the jurisdictions we've accepted the existing quality assurance processes that are in place for those providers but in the longer term the agency is going to be working on a nationally consistent accreditation and quality assurance process that is a longer term piece of work couldn't have that in place for the first of July last year but it's certainly underway now alright this one and then back on Peach Switzerland Access yes so you obviously put it in your name only your first name so it doesn't collect a lot of demographic data this was the idea so that we didn't want to have risks with people's personal information okay that was going to be my question if that comes up and says no you're not eligible there's some recourse for appeal and to oh certainly sorry yeah yeah no no no I mean there will be some things that will be very hard and fast so somebody from YAS for example they're not eligible they have to meet the basic access requirements but if it comes up it doesn't usually say unless it's one of those hard and fast things you're not in jurisdiction you're not a person with disability it will say it does not appear and then still invite them to contact after the 1st of July yeah yes so I wanted to ask around the experience that you've had in other places so far around people with very serious mental illness especially maybe if there's a lack of insight in families or services are needed for real support but the person maybe isn't able to really engage with the process of making people who are homeless for example I actually don't have anything I can share with you I think after the last one this also came up and I said I was going to ask my colleagues in each of the existing trial sites about whether they've got any examples so I will still do that I don't have anything specific I can share with you about that yeah well I expect so yeah just in terms of looking at what the projected population is for the ACT and we look at who's currently assisted by the service system and there is some about 2500 people roughly there's different figures that are currently accessing formal support services so actually getting to 5000 or 5075 is a significant increase in the number of people that would be able to be or expected to be eligible for services when we've looked at who's in the service system and who should be eligible we've looked across the hack the home and community care program we've looked into the mental health services to look for those people who would indicate to have a psychoso... disability needs psychosocial disability or support needs as opposed to those people who are unwell or have health needs related to their psychosocial disability and the numbers we've had in the ACT I think is a projection of about 950 people that would be eligible so we've actually got a lot of scope to ensure that everybody who need you know it certainly will be more people will be accessing services than currently so and you had a question I think we're going to self managing yes are they required to just select and provide it as registered with you no they can select outside and this is one it does become bi-aware certainly and I mean this is one of the complicating factors in an ideal world everybody would be self managing and have the most the broadest flexibility about selecting who provided their services but the reality is it's only people who are self managing that will have that very high level of flexibility those who choose to self manage the experience has been so far that most of them are people who've got the skills to do that many people will select not to do it because and actually even people who've got the skills to do it sometimes don't want to do it just because of the sheer amount of work involved but yes it does become bi-aware so from the side of that somebody decides to allow the NEIA to manage their funds do they then still have the choice of service provider? the service provider is registered with you there's no constraints put on because in terms of we're always going to be that nominal owl in the fee so the agency won't say no we are going to choose the most economic service for you that so I could talk again about the trial side experience so in order to it would have been very difficult for the agency at the outset to allow a completely unregulated provider market from the beginning you can understand why that would have been problematic we would have had no idea about what the costs were going to be so prices were set for those high volume regular supports that everybody needs they for example like personal care they looked at local markets they chose prices that were operating and existing in local markets and that's the price I don't I don't know whether we're going to do the same thing in the ACT I'm sorry we can find that out for you so any provider who's registered to deliver services in the ACT if a person's got a package where they need X number of personal support hours a week they can choose from the personal support providers that are there it's only where they're self managing that they can choose outside because we have to have some way of connecting the participant with the providers to allow that invisible back of house payment to occur it was just last year one of the one of the things that stuck in my mind was somebody said that the disability care as it was then would become the largest purchaser of services in the country no we don't purchase services there was an indication given that they would choose what was reasonable and necessary and if there were two services provided and at the outset they looked to be about the same then they would choose the cheaper one but that of course reflects that thing of a choice yes it does a service provider would want to use I think that was more to do with those high cost services so if there were two that were appropriate yes when we're talking about the platinum plated turbocharged wheelchair they'd choose the one that was appropriate and fit for purpose and reasonable and necessary if the person wanted the next level up then they could pay the difference yeah copayments are a possibility sorry yeah and in kind so you know we talked about how some of the block grant funding cannot be unbundled for the commencement of the scheme here in the ACT so there will be some providers who continue to be block grant funded as they are in the existing trial sites and people can still choose to use they can use that and if they're already receiving services they can stay with their provider but they don't get paid for that because they're already being paid you know that person's already a client and they're receiving service they're still being paid and so they have to an amount of money which is the in kind amount that they're contributing to the scheme is allocated and set and then as clients use up that in kind money people who are participants in the scheme and they get to the ceiling then they can take on new clients and be paid for those additional sessions of service so that's a sort of a lay person's guide of how in kind works yeah one more question I think I want to know under the NDIS and the scheme how does it affect the support workers like that we have two categories the governmental support workers and the non-agency support workers do you have a fixed rate for them or is it actually depends on what services are being provided and again I just don't know in the ACT whether we're going to fix prices the CEO is wanting to move to an unregulated market I mean that is the way you get best competition absolutely but unregulated where we don't set prices anymore but at the moment we are setting prices and I don't know whether we're setting prices in the ACT I'm not going to talk about setting prices but just in terms of employment conditions if you're employed by an organisation now you'd be covered by an award and those award conditions would be remain in place so most people are employed and that would stay in place and if you choose to move to a different organisation you'd be covered by the awards and conditions of that employment alright one last one alright two last ones that's it that's it alright two more so that discussion with jurisdictions about how and where the rollout will continue beyond the trial period is happening now but that's going to be very complex we're going to move from the end of the third year from about 35,000 people into the scheme up to very rapidly around 450,000 people so I just can't get my head around that but that discussion is happening now about where and how and last one lucky last self-managing self-managing I've got a client's mother she told me she would like to purchase the personal care service from a particular nurse but the nurse may not register as a service provider can mother do if she's self-managing yes she would be able to purchase that and if I do register as a service provider she possibly could register as a provider I mean sorry yes to register as a basic level yes you would need an ABN to be able to register as a provider and you'd have to have your own insurance in a sense you know it comes with that issue about buyer beware if you're purchasing services from somebody that has a specialist aspect to it like that you'd need to be sure that what you're purchasing is what you're going to get on our website already there are sample agreements for people who are self-managing so if people are thinking about seeking services from a particular service provider there's a template service agreement that they can use to formalise whatever the terms of that agreement are yeah alright well thank you very much for your fantastic attention