By NOEL MURPHY
GEELONG’S NDIS trial is proving disastrous for people with disabilities as it cuts their existing services and refuses to provide new assistance.
“They’ve made our lives a living hell and they don’t give a damn,” an angry Linda Mathews told the Independent this week in the latest criticism of the controversial disability care scheme.
Ms Mathews was concerned her 16-year-old son, who has a profound intellectual disability and autism, could die if the NDIS refused to help.
“We couldn’t even get the funding for security products to keep him safe at home. He ended up in hospital as a direct result of this and still they wouldn’t fund it.
“While they’re mucking around he’s already got out once and I was woken by half a dozen phone calls, including the police who had my naked son in their care.
“Every night I have to barricade the door with all sorts of stuff just to put him off trying or that maybe I might hear him trying to leave.”
Highton pensioner and mental-illness victim Rita Cebergs said the NDIS bureaucracy cut her taxi services, funding for education courses, cleaning assistance and respite.
“My experience with NDIS has made me so angry I could spit.
“I went to the NDIS, had a one-and-a-half-hour meeting and all I got was a support worker who comes once week.
“The Disability Support Fund that all people on disability pension could go to for money for a paper or a gym membership or to go to school is gone.
“I wanted to go to school so I could get casual work but I don’t have money to pay and they won’t fund it. They say it won’t fit their parameters.”
Ms Cebergs said the NDIS was badly equipped to deal with mental health clients, throwing up red tape barriers most were unable to negotiate.
“I have to speak out not just for me but for people with mental health issues.
“Now I have no cleaning where previously the council subsidised cleaning every fortnight. The NDIS said I’d have to have an occupational health therapist to see if I need funding for a cleaner.
“I’m so upset.”
The latest criticisms follow Grovedale MS sufferer Rob Goodman complaining in last week’s Independent after the agency removed virtually all her services and assistance.
She wrote to the NDIS this week, saying paperwork, meeting, referrals and follow-up procedures were stressful, time-consuming and exhausting for applicants.
She suggested the new system was aimed at reducing government costs for services to the disabled.
Complaints lodged on the NDIS’s Facebook page include inflexible guidelines and cuts to mobility allowances and early intervention services for children with disabilities and developmental delays.
Legal advocates soliciting work from aggrieved NDIS applicants made all the posts.
