Report from the disability sector: postcodes, profits and prophets meaning uneven outcomes for people with disabilities

Jeff Thompson, a disability employment specialist from a community organization in Canberra, reflects on the changing landscape of disability services, and wonders who the current policies are serving.

A friend of mine recently told his NDIS planner that he didn’t want a religious organisation as his Local Area Coordinator (LAC) - that is, responsible for designing, explaining and implementing his NDIS plan. In response, he was informed that a non religious service provider was not available in his postcode. When he again asked for a secular community-based LAC, there was silence on the line. This was now off script for this particular public servant. They had no choice but to simply repeat that this kind of service was not available in this postcode. Computer says no.

Who cares, right? My friend does. He has spent many years supporting people recovering from conversion therapy and feels the church has been dragging its feet. He doesn’t want the church involved in his life. Period. Too bad for him. Church-based organisations now deliver the lion’s share of community services. Organisations including Salvos, Vinnies, Uniting Care and Anglicare are now the major players in the welfare industry. Money traders in the temple? It’s hard to speak up for the poor and oppressed when your business model relies on people to be poor and...um...oppressed. If Jesus was in his grave he’d be turning.

I work for a community-based disability service started by six families in a kitchen in the late 80s - they wanted to get real jobs for their children rather than seeing them disappear into a sheltered workshop. We’re run by a board made up of community members, families and professionals. We are equal opportunity employers and we focus on individualised supports. We’re small fry in the current market. And we’re suffering. We cling to JobKeeper like Jack holding on to that bit of driftwood in Titanic. We’re turning blue here.

One of the hats we wear is as a Disability Employment Service or a DES in Department of Social Services lingo. A quick overview of recent policy directions will show an increase in the number of people eligible for DES services to almost 250 000. Eighty per cent of these participants are serviced by five services. Some of these are big for-profit international companies, one of which made a profit of 145 million US dollars last year.

With the increase in corporate involvement you’d imagine a corresponding increase in job outcomes for people with disabilities. However, a quick glance at the numbers and you’ll see that only 30% of participants are achieving any kind of meaningful job outcomes. Hardly any services are interested in providing ongoing support once a person has a job, so the job success rates remain low. For us in the ‘current market’ (as it's now referred), we’ve moved so far from where we want to be it’s making us wonder if we even want to be involved in the program any more. Checking on the payslips of people every week and sending them to the department as proof. Is that us?

Luckily the decision isn’t mine to make but I do wonder what the future holds for our community-based service that’s been around for 30 years. Maybe we won’t be available in our own postcode soon.