The Minister for the NDIS had a press briefing concerning a change to reduce eligibility for People with psychosocial mental healthcare needs.
I am one of those people and I am struggling badly. I am awaiting a response from the NDIS as to whether I have been approved. The Minister said a cohort of applicants will now be ineligible (including myself) but utterly nothing about contingency plans, measures put in place, timing, capture of the cohort into prepared alternatives. Nothing about what People like me waiting or considering applying can expect. What clients, mental health organisations will do from that same day!
It wasn’t just a press announcement, I felt it was yet another ten tonne weight dropped without a net so it fell on the backs of some of our most vulnerable. It has floored me when I am already barely surviving.
I ask, based on my experience, how in good conscience can an entire ministry with communications and PR and expert health advisers have ever thought such a short-term empty thought bubble be safe for those at risk. I feel we all know of such risks. I’m lucky, I have some help. I believe others who are on a precipice do not!
I have now lost faith and trust in the government. My writing should not sound political. I applied for the NDIS so I could return to work and find something I can do to help Australia and my self and family. Workplaces trigger me to panic. I hallucinate around others. I am very heavily medicated. A disability employment service provider won’t help. The last 2 or 3 just exacerbated my illness while they met their KPRs.
I haven’t asked for anything else for my NDIS plan, just help dealing with my extreme challenges with work-induced stress stopping me from functioning. I feel DESPs aren’t enough. Isn’t it right that I should be able to find suitable employment and to have ongoing advocacy, support, mediation etc just while I require it. Until it is safe?
I’m middle aged. My childhood abuse of a type most horrid has cursed me all my life. I live in my room. I have no friends. Many of my own family cut contact with me. Every job I have been blamed, or bullied or assaulted verbally or physically by bosses and fellow employees or clients. No DESP is equipped to help keep me safe. I am a kind, caring, non-aggressive, confused Person trying before I’m too old to have a small victory by being safely employed.
Isn’t that the whole idea? I then pay taxes, I can earn a living, I can help my community?
Minister, your words hurt me badly with what I felt were short-sighted, damaging, empty, cold words. Why didn’t you prepare the groundwork for the implications beforehand and make those changes and immediately available options the focus of your words? Where do People like me go Right Now to be safe?
Crushed again. No apparent safety net for us? Again? Some of the most vulnerable who have suffered massive trauma and/or neglect, abuse, psychosis, social isolation and so much more. We are not a cohort, we are Australians and Survivors.
I feel you have set me back many rungs of this ladder. I believe it never needed to happen if those making decisions kept us in their thoughts.
Explanations