NDIS National Workforce Plan

Community

Community responses to the NDIS National Workforce Plan

I am always disappointed when I see links between the disability support workforce and other allegedly adjacent sectors. This Plan is clearly looking to rise all boats with a single tide, referencing the aged care and the veterans care workforces. It is a strange reference for most providers, as only 1% of NDIS providers deliver NDIS, aged care, and veterans’ care. The fundamental aims, purposes, and structures of the NDIS are different from the aged care sector. We can’t expect an expert disability support worker to be able to function as effectively in the aged care sector: different vibe, different culture, different expectations, different skills, different setting – it’s just different. Drawing links like these really undervalue the principles and foundations of the NDIS. I wouldn’t ask my plumber to wire up a new plug socket.

It’s not necessarily a huge problem, but throughout the Plan there are references to the importance of creating (and filling) these jobs at a critical time in the post-COVID recovery of the Australian economy. DSS is quite up-front about this, and it’s an economic reality... but I can't shake an uneasy feeling about where it might end up. I am comfortable with being selective as a sector. In my provider days, I was very careful in my hiring decisions, because the human, quality, cultural, and financial costs of getting it wrong were much greater than the benefits of just finding a body to fill a role and thus increase revenue. If the subtext is that “jobs need filling for reasons beyond the Scheme,” I worry about the pressure on providers and participants to accept sub-par services in the name of propping up the economy. In short, we can be part of the solution, but that can’t be our main responsibility. The Plan seems to be relatively well referenced and researched. I don’t get the sense that it has been written by a new graduate Project Officer in a dark corner of a Canberra office and then sent straight to the designer (which is more than can be said for some NDIS documents). But there is an overall lack of active participant voice. Yes, providers are the ones doing the recruiting, but participants are the ones ultimately picking the workers, or at least they should be. So, I would hope in the future implementation of this Plan, they are more centrally involved.