Why compulsory ‘independent’ job capacity style assessments for disabled people under #NDIS are an awful idea that destroys our rights based scheme (my personal view as an @NDIS participant - a thread)

Here’s what we know. From early 2021 independent assessments will be required as part of the access process. And from mid 2021 independent assessments will be required as part of the plan review process. You won’t get a plan or Budget without an independent assessment first.

The Government says there will be fewer automatic reviews and they’ll be based on ‘life stages’, instead of every year or two, but that every plan review will require an independent assessment.

That sounds comforting right? It’s not. This removes flexibility and creates another hoop to jump through if your needs change. If you’re disabled you have LOTS of changes and ‘life stages’. Most of us are experiencing a giant collective life stage change right now.

And what’s to stop them gradually sneaking in more regular plan reviews? Like they snuck this in. Remember - it’s an actuarial scheme. We’ll all wind up like on DSP or the old Newstart with disabled people having to front up and justify our needs for support again and again.

Where is this army of OT’s, physios, psychs and doctors going to come from? It’s already hard to find professionals for people and families who really need them. Now the rest are going to be vacuumed up churning out functional assessments designed to kick people off @NDIS

Apparently we’re all going to have to submit to govt grillings about our ‘capabilities’ and how ‘we manage tasks and activities in our life’ like a job performance review, but for disabled people. With strangers. About private areas of our lives. Goodbye mental health

This makes us all like children where we have to go through a demeaning and intrusive process of having judgy able bodied ‘professionals’ paid to barge in and grill us about our cognitive abilities, how we bathe or go to the toilet, cook food or clean the house. No thanks.

And it’s REALLY bad for some groups of people. Especially if you’re autistic or episodic or don’t tick a simple box