Stronger Toghether -
The NSW Government's 10 Year Disability Plan

September 11 / 2007 by Kevin Marron

Interchange Respite Care NSW (Interchange NSW) recently submitted a paper to the Federal Senate Commonwealth State/Territory Disability Agreement (CSTDA) Inquiry; supporting a number points which were raised in both the ACROD and National Carers Coalition.

Key points of Interchange NSW’s submission included:

• The provision of disability services should be in the form of a consistent national program and totally administered by one level of government. As carers and families identify that the service system landscape is complex, fragmented and difficult to access, the multitude of different funding programs with differing target groups, eligibility criteria, and modes of service delivery has created an inefficient system.
  
• There needs to be a revised Planning Framework developed that encapsulates a Population Based Bench Mark Funding formula as expressed in both the submissions from the National Carers Coalition and ACROD. People with disabilities as citizens of this country should have a right and entitlement to support. This should not be planned and delivered within a rationing mentality. This should be undertaken on a national level and incorporate demographic changes, current & future needs & expectations of carers and care recipients, and capacities of service providers.
  
• Funding bench mark formulas as developed for the aged care sector must be developed and implemented for the disability sector to meet the current level of unmet need and the future growth in need. There is no shortage of evidence, particularly from the Australian Institute of Health & Welfare, that there is an outstanding level of the disability population who have unmet needs in relation to community support.
  
• Research needs to be increased to help support the planning activities to determine future need, the development of innovative models of service delivery that best utilise resources and meet client needs, and to identify & develop appropriate tools to measure client outcomes.
  

• Service compliance & Monitoring Systems need to have some commonality across funding programs. Although broader than the CSTDA, there is an issue for providers who receive funding grants from multiple program sources and hence need to comply with multiple quality monitoring systems. This is applicable to funding programs such as HACC, and the National Carers Respite program where providers need to meet & respond to different monitoring systems. It would be helpful if there was one consistent service monitoring approach applicable to all funding programs, and hence reduce the cost and administrative load on providers with regard to monitoring and compliance.
  

• The failure by the Commonwealth government in recent years to pass on CPI costs in its funding contributions to state grants programs has impacted on respite providers and slowly erodes their service capacity.
  
  Recognition of the administrative costs which continually climb and impact on service providers, such as Workers Compensation, training, rent, travel, quality compliance, etc. need to be factored into funding grant components to allow services to maintain viability.