Some people are asking why independent #NDIS assessors are a bad thing.

This decision will kill women like me.

In order to understand this, you need to look hard at what govt intends to do and why they did it in the first place and why this is terribly, terribly wrong.

2/ They quietly held a 'pilot' and as @BBuckl3y points out, you can't get any FOI on this, which is always a bad sign. I'll be asking about how those 'participant satisfaction' surveys were run, because that's always fun to read if you like coercion.

https://www.ndis.gov.au/participants/reviewing-your-plan-and-goals/preparing-your-plan-review/independent-assessment-pilot-iap#what-we-found-in-the-first-pilot

3/ Experience of disabled people with Centrelink DSP assessors is generally atrocious and we have reports of many suicides here and overseas. Google 'ATOS' and work capacity assessments. But what this is doing is worse - because we have already proved we are disabled & need help.

4/ Let me make this clear - disabled people, especially autistic women, can and will suicide over this decision. This decision will kill women like me. 1 in five women with ADHD who are autistic, like me, have attempted suicide. Most of us are barely coping with NDIS ALREADY.

5/ I am autistic, adhd, mad and have limb girdle muscular dystrophy. Earlier this year I was in a psych ward dealing with massive vicarious and other trauma.And the man named in this was my psych upon admission. https://thewest.com.au/news/wa/man-refused-help-for-wife-with-ms-ng-ya-291189 Sent 'assessors' to run their hands over me.

6/ That was probably because he was risk averse because the last physically disabled woman of that age in that situation got sent home to die at the hands of her husband. So those men 'assessed' me for two hours until I could not stand it any more and until I broke.

7/ Fortunately, in Joondalup mental health unit there is nowhere to hang yourself in the shower, because no hanging points. Unfortunately that means you can't shower, either, because it's not accessible. You can read about that fuckery here. https://twitter.com/criprights/status/1217325392945504257 CW: suicide.

8/ MOST of us have medical trauma already. MOST of us have had to jump through unbearable hoops in order just to access medical care.ANY assessment of any kind is traumatic but right now, at least we can choose the least harmful option, someone who is a SPECIALIST in their field.

9/ I do not know if you know how humiliating it is to be told to strip to your underwear to be looked at. To limp a few metres with whatever strength you can muster, trying not to fall, while men you do not know watch you with cold, assessing eyes. http://gimpled.blogspot.com/2015/01/public-stripping.html

10/ I do not know if you know what it is like to be grilled by an insurance doctor. The ones who have targets aimed at saving the government $ rather than saving or improving your health. The ones who are NOT on your SIDE. 32 ppl a week dead in the UK. https://dpac.uk.net/tag/atos-kills/ 

11/ If you are one of the little girls who was like me, who had to stand in your flowered underwear while they touched you over and over again - no, I will not go to an assessor. I would rather die than do that.

Many of us will just disengage and die instead. Their goal I guess.

12/ What caused them to want to do this? Well, the clues are in the 'trial', always. I have been round the block with this before. Look at who they 'tested'.

They're trying to weed out autistic ppl and ppl with psychosocial disability.

13/ And they had the perfect excuse to discontinue the 'trial'. The pandemic, the one we are all trying to survive. Trial discontinued, they continued anyways. Announcing it in the middle of a pandemic. Too dangerous to continue the 'trial', but okay to commence this fuckery.

14/ They discontinued it without testing the other diagnostic groups, I am guessing. I want to know how many other diagnostic groups they are 'testing' with their 'standardised testing' tools which, we already know, do not work for any of us.

@Jordonsteele

15/ And here is the very clever bit, really. They commissioned the Tune report, as @CraigWtweets points out, so we had a bit of candy to put on our fridge. But they also then triggered a need to change the legislation, yes? And they would know that they need to. So here we are.

16/ Even in the infancy of job capacity assessments, way back in 2008, there were issues. https://www.ombudsman.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0022/26275/investigation_2008_05.pdf Also, the DSP is fucked and most of all the people on Newstart are people who are disabled. Half of all the people eligible in 2011 are no longer eligible for DSP.

17/ Ask these questions.

Ask the NDIA how they are going to count the suicides. Including of those not yet in the scheme because they could not get in.

Ask whose mates the big multinational is that wins the tenders.

Ask what choices disabled people have in all of this.

18/ Ask what harm this will cause and what the previous cost of state disability schemes was and how much is actually being 'spent' now on the NDIS. Work it out like an actuary, work out the $ being spent on each human. Work out how much support each person is actually getting.

19/ Ask what process instigated this and why they thought this was necessary. It wasn't just because we couldn't get diagnostic assessments, this is about functional capacity, not just eligibility. This is about knocking out as many crips from the system as we can.

20/ Ask how this will work for Aboriginal people (NB, it won't. Go look at Headspace to find that shit out). Ask how it will work for regional and remote. Ask how it will work for people from CALD communities and those who have multiple impairments, like me.

21/ Ask how well their standardised testing is working and ask disabled people what they think. Ask about their experiences with job capacity assessments and Centrelink. And ask why, why this is necessary for a scheme to get the daily support we need to live our lives.