National Disability Insurance Agency Palmed Off An Indigenous Teen After Making Him “Poster Boy”
“He became what will always be regarded as part of a Stolen Generation, even now, when it is that people, young people, children are being taken from Aboriginal families."
An Indigenous teenager, who was made a “poster boy” for the National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIA), was later knocked off from his supported living arrangement, an inquiry has heard.
The Disability Royal Commission has turned its attention to the support and service issues faced by Indigenous people living with disability in remote communities. Five days worth of Public Hearing 25 began on Monday in the Northern Territory, aiming to shed light on the National Disability Insurance Scheme’s (NDIS) access and operation in these areas, to determine “whether those barriers cause or contribute to violence, abuse, neglect, and exploitation of First Nations people with disability,” read a statement.
The inquiry heard from disability support worker Joan during her testimony on Monday. She spoke about 18-year-old Joziah who relies on a wheelchair for his quadriplegia, dysphasia, and dislocated hips. Both people used a pseudonym for the duration of the proceedings.
“Joziah led a very active life because he’s quite sociable — he’s a really likeable fella, and he’s really loved by the community. He has the ability to light up the room with his smile,” she reflected.
“But he was challenged, because was being serviced in an aged care facility, and consequently, when the NDIA came to town, he was a little bit of poster boy for them, in that they had him beamed up on a big photo in all of their pamphlets, selling the wares of the NDIA, and how they could make a difference in people’s lives.”
Joan explained that it was hard for Joziah to not be with peers in his own home, and that he was later moved into a solo residence within a group community setting — an opportunity for supported independent living and socialisation that offered hope, at the time.
“The agency decided they would withdraw funding from him … and in doing so, it meant that he was going to be without a home,” she went on, saying he was placed in the care of government department Territory Families instead, and separated from his mother who could no longer visit him in the same capacity.
Joan said her understanding of the turn of events was that the financial support was unsustainable and expensive to the NDIA long-term.
“But they made that promise, they gave it to him … but then they decided, they made a call to one of the managers at the disability service provider who was looking after him, and they said, ‘we’re going to make a mandatory report — we’re withdrawing his funding’.”
“Now we’ve brought in a scheme that is so complex for them to understand that they have been even further pushed out to the margins…”
Thankfully, Joziah was able to stay in his accomodation under the split responsibility between the territory and federal bodies, but Joan said the move left him more isolated than ever.
By the NDIA palming off some of the costs to Territory Families, the department ended up absorbing a pseudo-role as his guardian, and controlled who had access to his home. “He became what will always be regarded as part of a Stolen Generation, even now, when it is that people, young people, children are being taken from Aboriginal families,” she said.
When the care order expired over two years, Joziah was then moved from his community in Tennant Creek to Alice Springs — over 500kms away from his friends and family — to access better support services.
“If I think about what Aboriginal communities have experienced through the NDIS is — they’ve already had distrust of government mob, and now we’ve brought in a scheme that is so complex for them to understand that they have been even further pushed out to the margins to not be able to make informed decisions about some of these complex systems being brought into their families,” said Joan.