About us
A series of mis-designed policies from NDIA, have demonstrated that NDIA bureaucrats are too far removed from the day-to-day realities of disability, don't use the scheme or interact with the disability sector, to understand the issues affecting participants and are therefore unable to safely design disability policy from Canberra.
Co-design with the disability community is necessary to ensure that NDIA's policies accommodate the needs of its disabled participants and do not harm them. Disability policy is high risk- NDIS participants are among the most vulnerable people in Australia.
To this end, members from the disability community– with backgrounds in government, law, allied-health and support coordination– have come together to form Disability Watch, in order to:
- develop safe user-led disability policy alternatives, with a view to informing co-design;
- while mindful of the need to improve NDIS' financial sustainability. Effective disability policy is not simply a question of more funding, but designing smart policies which target the needs of participants.
What we do
Specifically, Disability Watch seeks to:
■ Monitor the harm to disabled participants resulting from poorly designed NDIS policies
■ Bring attention of the Australian public to NDIS policies which are harmful, through the publication of policy articles.
■ In doing so, act as a primary source for Australia mainstream Australian media regarding user-led policy issues on NDIS.
■ Analyse NDIS disability policy from a user-led perspective
■ Encourage co-design by developing user-led policy and law reform proposals which draw on the disability communities extensive working knowledge of: disability and the disability industry and therefore an understanding of how fraud happens and where the current policy dysfunctions in NDIS are.
■ Liaise with the legal community by:
▪︎ Informing them which in NDIS policies or laws are causing harm to NDIS participants;
▪︎ Refer aggrieved NDIS clients to them;
▪︎ Support law-firms pursuing class-actions which would improve the welfare of NDIS participants through policy changes.