The Australian Autism Handbook by Benison O'Reilly

Author:Benison O'Reilly
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781925183672
Publisher: Ventura Press

CHAPTER

14

Getting started with the NDIS

THE NDIS has been a gamechanger for Australian families. We know how daunting and complex it can seem at first, but take a deep breath, grab a cup of tea and start reading. Benison and I are keen for you to know that you will learn to manage it and that there is help available along the way.

Our aim in this chapter is to explain the NDIS simply and clearly and to give lots of examples of how different families use it, along with their advice on making it work well. Remember that the NDIS is an insurance-funding mechanism. While it can help you fund therapies and resources, it is how you make use of these that will have the biggest impact on your child and family. Bear in mind the lessons from the ‘Early intervention and supports’ chapter (chapter 10); family involvement is crucial for the child (and can be so very rewarding for us parents and carers). Focus on your child’s strengths and their passions and try to allow them to play, live, grow and develop in the company of other children, just as you would any child.

Let’s start with a positive story from one family.

We had to contact the Cerebral Palsy Alliance as our first step into the NDIS as they were the local Early Childhood Partner. They put us in touch with a provider who let us know that an NDIS person would call us. At that same time we were actually in publicly funded speech therapy. We realised that when she got her NDIS funding, she would also be not able to do that, so we had to start looking for private speech therapy.

The NDIS was so easy. We have had the best NDIS experience.

They contacted us. We had a lady come out to us at our house and for two hours we went through a questionnaire about everything to do with Tahlia and what our goals are. That was horrible, to be honest, because it was just once again focusing on the things that she can’t do rather than enjoying the things that she can do. But we are also very rational people and realised that we needed to do this to get to be able to do the good stuff. The lady submitted the report and then a month later we got the plan and we were off. We self-manage, and this was done through the early childhood approach.

Our plan included speech therapy, occupational therapy and group therapy only at that point. Since then, we’ve added a continence person which I organise, and we have an iPad now too. So there have been things added on but initially it was quite basic just to get her into early intervention. We had been to see an early intervention centre and we had a place in a group for her so we could include that in the planning. We had the quotes, we had the description of what was happening and we just gave it to the NDIS.

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