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Lessons from (nearly) 10 years in DES
After almost 10 years, I have stepped away from Disability Employment Services (DES) – partly by choice, and partly circumstances.
The circumstances mentioned above were the organisation I worked for being unsuccessful in tendering for the new Inclusive Employment Australia (IEA). The choice side of the equation was that I believed I had done all that I was able to do within the parameters of DES and IEA going forward.
I valued my time in DES, starting in administration and ending in case management. I also valued the organisation that gave me the opportunity to contribute to an area of work and life that I am passionate about, disability.
I also learned some valuable lessons, not just about myself, but about what may work and not work in the industry. This is about the latter. I also learned what still needs to evolve.
The first lesson is that attitudes towards people with a disability have shifted in the right direction. Is it that that is a product of the times, with more social awareness? Perhaps.
There were, however, still some infuriating attitudes to deal with. I still recall occasions when speaking with prospective employers about matching people with their organisations, that I would get asked things such as ‘are they special?’.
That ignores the reality that workers in the industry are supposed to match people with the right jobs. There are however well documented and discussed occasions where that has not occurred.
One of the next things that would be asked or enquired about were wage subsidies. It seemed on occasion that employers knew the system and were only willing to give people with a disability a chance with assistance involved. The assistance can be both a good and a bad thing.
Something I have learned, both as a participant in the system, and as an employee, is that bigger does not equal better.
I have been with organisations as a participant that just treated you like a number. Thankfully, the organisation that employed me was not one of them, and that is something that both myself and participants valued.
On the face of it, it appears that bigger has been valued as better in the transition to IEA. Big organisations won contracts, and smaller organisations were awarded more service areas. There were however some notable big scalps as part of the culmination of the tender process.
It will be interesting to see whether the changes that have been implemented as part of the framework for IEA will be enough to offset this.
While not being an employee in the area going forward, I will continue to observe and engage as someone wanting to see improvements and success in this and all areas of disability services.
NDIS, But When?
Today marked a potentially momentous day in the lives of people with a disability around this fair nation of Australia. Today marked the day where, after a prolonged period of campaigning, the Gillard Government, in response to a Productivity Commission report, announced it would pursue a National Disability Insurance Scheme. To their credit, the Liberal and National Party coalition also announced support for the scheme.
The type of scheme recommended by the Productivity Commission is a commonwealth funded scheme, costing $6.5 billion and covering everyone who has a disability or acquires one. It would include all reasonably required programs of care and support to make the lives of people with a disability easier than the state and federal-based schemes currently available.
Having an overarching scheme, run by one tier of government, but with input from the states will cut duplication of services and potentially cut substantial waste, compared with the current approach which has little uniformity in available services.
Prime Minister Gillard announced that discussions and work on the scheme would commence from the very next Council of Australian Governments (COAG) meeting where the states will be invited to form a committee to work on and oversee implementation.
States having a role in the implementation of the new scheme means that the current services offered by states, in differing ways can form part of the infrastructure to be built upon, rather than starting the scheme from scratch.
Presumably too, as part of this new National Disability Insurance Scheme, all existing laws in the states would be either added to or brought up to the same standard as each other and consistent with commonwealth legislation. For instance, housing and accessibility laws would need to be tightened across the country to make it easier for people with a disability to access universal design housing and to have easier access to buildings in general.
The question of cost is a very important one, particularly in the economic circumstances we find ourselves at present. We simply haven’t got $6.5 billion dollars to spend without either borrowing more from overseas, an unpalatable option, or increasing taxes, the most unpalatable of unpalatable options.
The Prime Minister today put forward those two options and also a third, cutting spending by doing a tax swap deal with the states. Without knowing the figures, I cannot see for certain how this would work so I will halt judgement on that option.
It seems to me that this program is of the utmost importance and has been needed for some time. It is a shame that any future overspending may put it in jeopardy into the future and again relegate the politics of disability into the ‘not sexy’ basket.
Work is not over for the NDIS movement and its followers. It is incumbent upon us to keep pursuing the matter right through to expected delivery in at least 7 years time. From that time the job will be to make sure the scheme is meeting all the expectations of its users and to be loud in calling for reform when it does not. Anything less will not see this become a positive reality.
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