Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee, , 7:05:46 to 7:12:37
The NDIA explains the implementation of the 10% reduction in social and community participation budgets and the escalation pathway for participants with high support needs.
Topics: Government spending, Social services
Speakers: Andrew Maitland, Chris Gatenby, Blair Comley, Hon Jenny McAllister, Ellie Whiteaker
So over to you, Senator Gatenbeer.
Thank you, Chair. Um I just wanted to go to the um social and community participation budgets from the the last budget and the budget measure around that. Um and just really looking at the how that's implementation is evolving. Um the changes to budgets for capacity building daily activity budgets has commenced. Um how many participants have had their budgets reduced by 10%? And do you have a representative dollar amount for these reductions?
Good afternoon, Senator Andrew Maitland, National Disability Insurance Agency. As the support determination is only just commenced uh earlier this month, we don't yet have validated figures on that. Our focus has been on putting up the scaffolding around ensuring communication, ensuring the process is working properly, and that uh we are number one protecting and safeguarding the participants, so we don't have validated data for you at this point.
Okay, so you probably then if I wanted to know perhaps how you've been applying that, whether it's automatically or people to staff doing it to review everyone's plan to apply the reduction
or I can explain how the reductions have been applied. So the first step in it is when a participant gets a new plan. So from the 1st of October, it is only for participants' first plans or re-assessed plans. It does not include renewals or plan continuations. Um at the point of the plan being re-assessed or created for the first time. Our plan is build out the plan which includes the components of SECP or social economic and compute and community participation and independent daily living skills. That is then input into our systems and it is broken down to subcategory level because within the uh instrument there are carve-outs for certain uh provisions such as employment supports, and those are then identified and our system then automatically removes those from the uh calculation, so they do not attract the reduction that is in the support determination. That's the first step. There is a second step, which is to do with uh high participants who have high support needs, which is also an instrument that's been uh defined as part of the process, and that's where we're trying to look after those participants who require 24 by 7 supports, which may be impacted by the reduction. Um what I can tell you is that that uh what we refer to as section 47B. Um we have had applications for that from participants or their plan nominees or their uh child representatives or um usually not child representatives because of the size of plans. And uh I can confirm that at this stage every single one of those that we receive has been actioned and they will all be actioned well within the time frames that are set out in the legislation.
Okay, and obviously can't give me the overall you know the data, but how many complaints have you had any complaints sort of received since the changes started rolling out?
Uh Senator, I can't give you data on that, but I can tell you that our complaint levels have not increased um since that period. Um I don't want to mislead you say there hasn't been a single complaint, but I'm not aware of any um major complaints. There may well have been one, but none that I can speak to myself. We can take that on notice and just check where there is. And I can also confirm that our escalations since the commencement have actually declined and escalations are where we need to uh intervene to ensure that a participant safety and well-being is looked after. So at this point, um those things have progressed as anticipated. Um but I would caution this is early days, and you know, it isn't a transitionary period.
And social and community participation support budgets, which also came. Just you know early this month, so 1st of October, if I've got that right?
That's correct.
Um to date, how many plans have been changed?
Again, Senator, because we need to validate that data, I can't provide you with that today.
Um are you tracking the reduction amounts of those plans? Do you have a figure on the amount of those plans are reduced by?
I don't have that for you. Um as I said, we will we are working to validate all our data to make sure that it is correct.
So how are you tracking that budget measure? Obviously, we're still in the first month, but how's that going to be done then or when will you have an update on that?
Uh again, we will be tracking it. We are just making sure that all our processes are operating exactly as intended. And as soon as we have that uh confirmation validation completed, then we will have information that will provide to the department in terms of uh tracking the progress of these initiatives.
And will that include sort of the average reduction or the largest reductions that have occurred? Will we be able to find that information in time?
We should be able to, Senator. I don't want to commit anything until I'm absolutely certain that I can provide it.
I think the broader point to make though, Senator Gattenby, is that the agency is required on a at regular intervals to update their projections to scheme costs overall, and it's those projections which feed into the budget processes that the department uh works on with the Department of Finance. I say that because it the tenor of your question suggests a kind of very detailed tracking of one measure in the budget, scheme performance more generally is integrated into our overall budget management processes.
I mean, will we see any effect? Will you be able to update things from IFO, for instance? Would there be any? You'd only have probably a month or so of impact or whenever you're doing in December, but well,
I suppose it's a matter for the department and department of finance, but it would be a question about when the my EFO finalisation of numbers have gone, how much data there is and whether anyone would believe that there was a material enough difference to vary the the Myfo estimate. And we will only by the time it's a bit hard to know my IFO is not a set date. Um so and and then the numbers of my IFO are finalised somewhat in advance of the publication date of my IFO. So it's a it just depends how far advanced we are, and therefore how much validated data we have which would then be considered with finance.