Thursday 25 June 2015

NDCO Expo- additional resources links


Thanks to the many people who came and chatted to me yesterday at the NDCO Expo in Hastings, Vic 

It was great to see so much interest  in improving communication environments for participation and inclusion. Call or email me about improving work or training or school environments  for you and/or individuals to explore communication opportunities for inclusive environments.
 
It was also great to see so much interest in Easy English, where to find current resources, and also how to begin to implement within organisations. I really loved seeing many of the students  given an opportunity to, and readily reading the information written in Easy English.

Links to some of the more talked about documents are below. If I have missed something you wanted a link to, let me know.


Country Fire Authority - Bushfires. Planning what to do.

Make contact with CFA to request printed copies or even a CFA trainer to work with you, using these resources


Australian Red Cross




Request printed copies from Red Cross.

VicPolice

Look out for the Victoria Police Information on Receipts, due for release this month.

Other

Special Girls Business and Special Boys Business, South Australia        www.secretgb.com/products

Books without Words, UK   

Contact me to talk about training in how to write Easy English, or projects you would like to see developed.

Cathy Basterfield
Speech Pathologist
0466 579 855




Monday 22 June 2015

NDIS - some articles to read

I recently saw a post on a Facebook group, indicating that many people who are currently grappling with the changes in the disability sector and the implementation of the NDIS are people with good cognitive skills, and advocacy skills. This is people with disability, as well as carers and people who support people with a disability. And many of these people are having problems understanding the steps, and how to put a plan together that gets funded appropriately.

But what about those who do not have good cognitive skills, or do not know how to advocate for themselves, or those they support?

This is an article from a few months ago, where the issue of funding for advocacy organisations is being discussed.NDIS: Advocates argue funding cut will make scheme participation difficult for those with intellectual disabilities

Alos check out the renamed NDIS Tier 2 Policy Framework, called Information, Linkages and Capacity Building 

It gives you an idea about how community inclusion is going to be developed in communities in this new paradigm. Hopefully many of the good community inclusion and capacity building organisations and projects already out there are not going to be lost with this new Framework.

Access Easy English engages people with disability in all their projects. Consumer review is paramount to the functionality of any project or document.  It would be fantastic if this could be grown further, and we could employ people with limited literacy to help to write the actual documents. This is the model in the UK. Talk to me about how you could include this in your organisation.

Cathy

Cathy Basterfield
0420532328

Saturday 13 June 2015

NDIS: winners and losers


2 recent articles I have read, discuss the issues for people who may not be accessing services under the new paradigm of the NDIS.

There are lots of positives under the new scheme, however as Jenny Green and Associate Professor Jane Mears in their article, The Implementation of the NDIS: Who Wins, Who Loses? (reference 1) state "On balance the individual funding was more likely to be used by people of working age with low support needs (from Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs 2010, p.13)."

Think about the implications of this type of data on the people you support.
How many of the people you support, fit the category of both working age and low support needs?

People with Complex Communication Needs are most often seen as having high support needs, and many also have difficulty advocating for themselves.  How many people with Complex Communication Needs are accessing the NDIS? How many are getting a meaningful plan for their ongoing support and future needs? How many are getting reasonable access to therapy assessments and support and training for support staff? What do you think needs to be put in place to ensure this significant group of people are accessing the services they need?

As stated by Soldatic et al in their article Intellectual Disability and Complex Intersections: Marginalisation, (reference 2) the NDIS is an opt-in model of service. In their article they draw attention to the work of Leipoldt’s and Hallahan who have suggested "that relying on the market to deliver individual choice is a problematic framing for the full realisation of disability rights. This is partly because a market-based system requires sociocultural literacy in “choice and self-interest” The authors go on to indicate  "Numerous disability groups have also suggested that there are a group of people at the margins who experience multiple and complex forms of disadvantage and, therefore, do not necessarily have this literacy.” (Sociocultural Literacy).
They also go on to suggest, “For these groups, accessing the NDIS may be a major challenge. If the onus is on the individual to prove his or her eligibility on a case-by-case basis, people with disabilities with complex social needs are unlikely to have the sociocultural literacy to interpret and activate administrative rules for their own individual benefit.”

These are important issues to discuss, as much of the discussion in the media about the NDIS is of the huge benefits for people with a disability. Often those that appear to be missing out, are those with little experience of advocacy.  Are people with multiple and complex needs, including social and mental health needs, or poor socio-economic backgrounds and/or poor education going to be able to meaningfully access the NDIS?

We will hear the NDIS is meeting benchmarks, but who is this for? Who is really accessing the NDIS, and who is missing out? What services and professional supports are people being able to access? 

Interestingly the latest quarterly report from the NDIS, has a breakdown of costs/client for support plans. In that  report the NDIS provide a 2 part analysis and so in one analysis, removes the costs of the group of people who have accessed the NDIS from institutional type environments, as being an aberration of costs, due to their high support needs. It would appear people with high support needs will not be a large proportion of the NDIS model. Is that really the case, or is it the case that people with high support needs have a range of other issues making it more difficult for them to know how to access the NDIS.



Cathy
Cathy Basterfield
Consultant Speech Pathologist
Access Easy English
0466 579 855

References
1.    Jenny Green & Associate Professor Jane Mears, The Implementation of the NDIS: Who Wins, Who Loses?  Cosmopolitan Civil Societies Journal 2014, 6(2): 3915,-

2.    Karen Soldatic, Georgia van Toorn, Leanne Dowse & Kristy Muir (2014) Intellectual Disability and Complex Intersections: Marginalisation under the National Disability Insurance Scheme, Research and Practice in Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities, 1:1, 6-16,
            DOI: 10.1080/23297018.2014.906050