Australia tightens oversight of NDIS providers in remote communities — ABC News Australia

Australia’s federal government has announced new measures against unscrupulous providers of National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) services in remote Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory. The decision was made following reports that some providers had offered program participants gifts, including food, cash, alcohol and tobacco products, to recruit and retain them in the program.

New community workers

The National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIA), which administers the NDIS, will fund community liaison worker positions in 17 remote settlements in the Northern Territory. Another eight such positions will be created in Queensland and four in New South Wales.

The workers will be recruited from local Aboriginal health services. They will help residents understand the program’s terms. NDIS Minister Jenny McAllister said the initiatives are intended to help Indigenous people with disabilities access the services they need and protect them from those acting improperly.

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Information gathering and checks

As ABC News Australia reports, the NDIS Commission will also contract a group of Northern Territory organisations that advocate for the rights of people with disabilities. Their representatives will visit remote communities, speak with program participants, their families, carers and traditional landowners, and then pass the information to the regulator.

This mechanism is intended to supplement the standard complaints procedure, which may be difficult for residents of remote communities to use due to a lack of phones or computers, or because English is not their first language. According to the NDIA, over the past three years the agency has considered more than 1,000 reports from the public concerning 234 providers operating in the Northern Territory. Forty-seven providers delivering services to NDIS participants in the region were referred for serious compliance enforcement action.

The NDIA also said it is manually reviewing payment claims from providers that, according to its information, are entering the Northern Territory market from Melbourne and Sydney. The agency said that in most such cases, providers were permanently excluded from the NDIS.