Introduction

Australia is implementing an ambitious new approach to individualised disability support based on a social insurance model. In a world first, the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) is funded through a levy on income and general taxation and gives Australians with disability an entitlement to social service support. It does not affect access to income support, which remains organised and funded through the general taxation system. Can the new scheme work in practice?

Constraints on the NDIS are whether people are eligible and what the size of their individual package might be. The estimate is that about 10% of people with disability will receive packages when the NDIS is fully implemented by 2019. Most people will continue to be pointed towards general social services, which will likely remain in short supply. Questions arise about the availability of mainstream and specialised services; coverage for people with complex needs; and information gaps to access support. The feasibility of the scheme remains under question during this establishment stage.

This chapter describes the NDIS approach and implementation so far and summarises concerns and challenges about the NDIS discussed in the literature. It then uses data from an action research project to inform these feasibility questions about how people find out about and receive the individualised support they need. Some people who took part in the research lived in NDIS pilot sites and others accessed other individual packages or contributed their expectations for future access when the NDIS is fully implemented in 2019. The research focused on whether they had sufficient knowledge and support to make use of that opportunity. This question has important implications for the position of individual packages relative to other social services.

In Australia, disabled people are currently referred to as people with disability and social care is referred to as social services or disability support; this is the terminology used in this chapter.

NDIS development to date

Individualised approaches to organising disability support are increasingly common internationally, whether driven by consumer sovereignty or citizen's rights (Needham and Glasby, 2014). Australia too has shifted in this direction over the last three decades, with various programs, pilots and eventually state-wide arrangements (Laragy et al, 2015). In 2013, national legislation was passed to introduce the NDIS, a social insurance model of disability support. The history and consequences of that change are discussed here.