The splendid journal Quadrant Online is a wellspring of wisdom. From the 6 July 2024 edition, here is an insightful article by Rafe Champion. Share this valuable material everywhere.
In 1979 I joined the NSW Anti-Discrimination Board and spent two years with a colleague investigating every aspect of the services available for the intellectually handicapped and their families and carers. We discovered an amazing tapestry of public, charitable, private and parent-organized services including hospitals, nursing homes, schools, sheltered workshops and every kind of residential facilities from major public hospitals to group homes for 3-5 people.
We achieved credibility in the field and I was invited to join the Board of The Council for Intellectual Handicap that was the peak body for over a hundred agencies. Due to family and professional commitments I walked away from the field on the eve of the Richmond Reforms. That became a disaster for the client population, but worse was to come.
The NDIS.
It seems that the reformers turned up in Canberra with a bucket of money and no knowledge of the rich ecology of services for the handicapped in the states.
Much could have been achieved with sensible allocation of money at the state level, feeding into the existing infrastructure where the provider. were close to the clients and the other providers in the vicinity.
The most immediate need was probably respite care and the commissars in Canberra could have got a lot of brownie points by sinking a lazy Billion in that sector, through the existing providers.
Then they could have spend a year or so getting to know the territory in the way that we investigated in 1980.
I am not well informed on the details but it looks as though an avalanche of money was injected in a very strange way that swept away the delicate ecosystem of services, staffed by people who generally knew their population and their needs , to be replaced by overpaid bureaucrats, hundreds of miles away, with no on the ground experience, setting up an over-funded and dysfunctional lesser bureaucracy that was immediately capture, by opportunists and frauds.
Of course many deserving beneficiaries have been helped and they are grateful, but it was always going to be a disaster, starting from Canberra with practically unlimited funds, instead of starting near the bottom with local information and local contacts to enhance the existing network of services.
On the disaster of the NDIS, I commented on this piece in The Spectator, recalling the work I did on intellectual handicap in NSW in 1979 to 1982.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/07/disabling-our-economy/?
In 1979 I joined the NSW Anti-Discrimination Board and spent two years with a colleague investigating every aspect of the services available for the intellectually handicapped and their families and carers. We discovered an amazing tapestry of public, charitable, private and parent-organized services including hospitals, nursing homes, schools, sheltered workshops and every kind of residential facilities from major public hospitals to group homes for 3-5 people.
We achieved credibility in the field and I was invited to join the Board of The Council for Intellectual Handicap that was the peak body for over a hundred agencies. Due to family and professional commitments I walked away from the field on the eve of the Richmond Reforms. That became a disaster for the client population, but worse was to come.
The NDIS.
It seems that the reformers turned up in Canberra with a bucket of money and no knowledge of the rich ecology of services for the handicapped in the states.
Much could have been achieved with sensible allocation of money at the state level, feeding into the existing infrastructure where the provider. were close to the clients and the other providers in the vicinity.
The most immediate need was probably respite care and the commissars in Canberra could have got a lot of brownie points by sinking a lazy Billion in that sector, through the existing providers.
Then they could have spend a year or so getting to know the territory in the way that we investigated in 1980.
I am not well informed on the details but it looks as though an avalanche of money was injected in a very strange way that swept away the delicate ecosystem of services, staffed by people who generally knew their population and their needs , to be replaced by overpaid bureaucrats, hundreds of miles away, with no on the ground experience, setting up an over-funded and dysfunctional lesser bureaucracy that was immediately capture, by opportunists and frauds.
Of course many deserving beneficiaries have been helped and they are grateful, but it was always going to be a disaster, starting from Canberra with practically unlimited funds, instead of starting near the bottom with local information and local contacts to enhance the existing network of services.