Northcott launches subsidiary dedicated to innovation
Not-for-profit disability service provider Northcott has launched a new subsidiary named Northcott Innovation. Described as a “radical new organisation,” the subsidiary will be dedicated to co-creating creative and unexpected solutions to support people with disability.
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Home sweet home. Or not
Every Australian Counts supporters are desperate for action on housing for people with disability. Hundreds of responses have been pouring in to our call for housing stories and ideas. Here is just a small sample.
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NDIS and First Peoples
By any measure Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people with disabilities are some of the most disadvantaged Australians, often facing multiple barriers to their meaningful participation within their own communities and the wider community.
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This game is not evil, it’s awesome
There’s a new mobile game called “Extreme Wheelchairing”, which you can find for free on the App store, or Google Play.
This is a game where you manoeuvre around 20 different levels of a virtual landscape avoiding all sorts of obstacles and so on. It’s much like dozens of other videos game most of us have played at one time or another.
But with one difference.
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NDIS game changer
On the weekend the NSW Premier Mike Baird promised to roll out early intervention services under the NDIS for up to 2,000 young people with disability in Penrith and the Blue Mountains from September this year if he is re-elected.
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Shoppers take note
It’s the everyday things that are sometimes the most challenging for mums, dads and carers of children with disability. Tasks like getting the weekly groceries can be that much harder when you’re trying to juggle a trolley and a wheelchair at the same time. The move by Coles to introduce new trolleys for kids with disability into many of its supermarkets will make this one everyday task a little easier.
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ACT NDIS live blog
With over 500 registered attendees, the ACT NDIS conference is set to be one of the largest, most comprehensive and practical events covering the NDIS held to date. Throughout the conference, we’ll be live blogging to bring you rolling coverage of all the latest news, views and discussion from on the ground.
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Take Action: how do you want to live?
The NDIS is designed to give choice and control to people with disability. There are many and varied ways that people with disability will want to live and we have listed a few below.
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The NDIA housing response decoder
Over the last few weeks thousands of our supporters emailed the National Disability Insurance Agency and asked them to release the plan for housing under the NDIS.
The response from the Agency on this vital issue was disappointing, bureaucratic and hard to read. We thought we’d have a go at de-coding it for you because on the question of housing, people with disability and the NDIS, we need it to be crystal-clear.
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NDIS at the fringe – equity of access for all?
A central aim of the NDIS is to provide equity of access to disability support. The terrible inequities of the past where access to disability support was based on rationing and queues should be banished. However, does the scheme as so far designed ensure equity of access for all people with disability or only for those people who have the awareness and understanding to seek out the NDIS or have family advocates to support them with this? Many people with disability are not in this position.
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Our iconic places set accessibility example
It’s great to see some of our cultural icons and natural places finally getting on board and taking accessibility more seriously. Here are two examples we’ve seen lately.
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You’ve just got to give it a go
Willow’s mum Janelle wasn’t sure her daughter would be eligible for the NDIS. She decided to give it a go, applied to the Scheme, and now the family is seeing real benefits.
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Click here for your chance to make a better life
We all want the NDIS to succeed. Thousands of lives are already being improved at the trial sites, and we know eventually the NDIS will make a huge difference for nearly half a million Australians. But to ensure the NDIS works well for everybody, we need people to feel safe and confident using it.
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NDIS: on budget
The latest quarterly report from the National Disability Insurance Agency is out and it shows growing numbers of people are benefiting from the NDIS.
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Changes proposed for disability support payments to encourage people into work.
In 2013 the Federal Government commissioned a review of Australia’s welfare sector and the final report was released today.
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NSW confirms bi-partisan approach to NDIS
Bipartisan political support for the continuing roll out of the NDIS was strongly in evidence at the recent NSW conference of non-government support providers, National Disability Services.
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She’ll be right says COAG but housing crisis remains
If the communiqué released this week from meeting of the COAG Disability Reform Council is anything to go by, Australia is all systems go for the NDIS. But the supply of affordable and liveable housing remains a key question.
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Home Sweet Home: the housing crisis for people with disability.
Home, sweet home. Three simple words that say so much about our happiness, our dreams and goals in life.
Many Australians take those words for granted. But some people, including people with disabilities, may never be able to utter those three simple words, and all because of a lack of suitable housing.
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Housing: the big sleeper
Anyone with a disability will tell you that finding affordable, accessible housing is next to impossible. There are huge wait lists, too many young people in nursing homes and growing numbers of older parents despairing what will happen to their children when they can’t care for them anymore.
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Expanding my horizon
It’s taking Stephen a while to get his head around being able to do things now that previously would have been impossible without the NDIS.
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A scorecard on the NDIS trials
As we near two years since the start of the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) we are beginning to get a handle on how this complex reform is living up to its promise to improve the lives of people with disability through choice, control and person centred support within an insurance approach.
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Attitude is the biggest barrier
Despite great leaps towards inclusion for all, our society still seems to have a fairly limited awareness of the need to or even how to make our communities accessible to all citizens.
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RecruitAbility? Just give us a job!
The Australian Public Service has launched a new scheme, RecruitAbility in an effort to raise the woefully low number of people with a disability they employ.
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NDIS Step 1: Think and Prepare
The NDIS is coming. Admittedly not fast enough for many of us but the fact that it will be rolled out across Australia in the next few years means now is a good time to start thinking about how to prepare.
Every Australian Counts has talked to lots of people in the trial sites and asked them what they think people with disability need to do to get ready for the NDIS.
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