** TRANSCRIPT BELOW - courtesy of Bec Cramp**
Hi, my name is Martha, I have Cerebral Palsy and I am in a wheelchair
I am married & have 3 dogs.
NDIS lack in Communication. This causes real distress - is this the aim of NDIS?
TALK TO ME:
Facebook: / adultingwithadisability
Instagram: marfjane
‘These views and opinions are my own'
** TRANSCRIPT **
“Hi. My name is Martha. And I’ve really debated whether to share this story or not, but it keeps haunting me. And so I think it’s time I share it. My story is about NDIS and the lack of communication and what this does to a person.
NDIS makes me feel like they’ve got me blindfolded, gagged and bound. At the best of times I wait patiently, but how long do you wait? And what if there are issues that are holding things up or that need to be clarified or rectified? I don’t know because they won’t answer my calls. They won’t ring me back and say “Martha, we’ve got this, everything’s okay. It’s just going through the process.”
And you know what? I don’t mind waiting. I really don’t mind waiting, but I need to know that it’s ok. I do try to communicate and talk to someone to make sure that they’re aware that I have an AT request in or whatever it is and to know that it’s on your radar and that it’s in the pile that’s actually been actioned forward. The lack of communication leads to a deterioration in my mental health.
Twice I have requested assistive technology and it has been a big fight. I’ve had to do a lot of chasing up. I’ve had to get the Ombudsman involved and the local MP. And this last time, none of that seemed to work. So I actually went into the NDIA office and asked to speak to someone and I was fortunate that the Business Services Officer at the front desk saw that my request was appropriate and got someone to actually come and talk to me. In the past, they’ve just told me that no-one’s been available. So, this time I feel that there had been a bit of progress.
NDIS is hard, it causes a lot of frustration and anger when you can’t get anyone in the NDIA to talk to you and tell you where things are up to. And my main concern or criticism is the lack of communication. If NDIS just communicated the wait wouldn’t be so hard. You know just to be told “we’re on it, we’re moving it forward, it’s ok” alleviates a lot of “what if’s?”, “where is it up to? what is happening?”
The lack of communication causes a lot of uncertainty and makes the NDIS infrastructure feel unsupportive. I have recently gone another round with the NDIA and even this time, the NDIA struggled to unravel my mess. They had to work really hard to understand why my request for communication didn’t get to them, and it’s still an ongoing issue. We have an 1800 number to ring and then they pass the message on to our NDIA office but it doesn’t reach them. What is going wrong!
Another issue was that they couldn’t even find my AT request. They had to do a deep dive to find it. And I know that my OT sent it and I also sent it through and when I rang the 1800 number, they saw it in my file several times. So, where is this missing link? Things are getting sorted but it has come at a cost.
I am mentally exhausted, and I am feeling depressed and I’ll tell you why I’m depressed. Firstly, I feel that I, alone, am in this struggle to get things done. There is no support, there is no one ringing the NDIS on my behalf and helping me out in this area. And even though I have a great LAC, she has no power to help me. All she can do is send an email and flag that I’ve made a request. How powerless is that! And my other issue that I have is for those that can’t fight for themselves? For those that are not strong enough to fight. For those that just don’t know, that say well “it’s in the system, they’ll look after it” and I know people that their AT requests have been sitting there for a year and no one’s picked it up.
And so I think, what needs to happen to make this system better? Firstly to make it work systematically so that things get processed and secondly that the participant is supported, cared for, acknowledged and responded to when they make a request.
I’d like to hear your feedback on this. What can be done to make things better?”
16 окт 2024
