The disability sector now has a choice to make, either throw out the entire script and start again or consider the true lack of options it has in a support system where costs will continue to rise and packages won’t be enough.
The real financial deficit facing the disability support system is well over the $90million originally projected, double that figure and you might be getting slightly close to the actual number. Some reports estimate around $150million total, but people The Real Michael Pulman spoke to this week suggested the system is looking at a $190million gap.
That’s a result of Government not giving enough funding despite injection, the mismanagement of that funding, the pay equity deal, rising demand and subsequent costs of providing support to disabled people, just to give a few examples.
Then came Enabling Good Lives, and later on, Mana Whaikaha. Two pilots that are made of up everything that disabled people and families need, except the funding as it turns out.
Inadequate Support No New Thing With EGL & Mana Whaikaha
The concept of and the principles driving Enabling Good Lives/Mana Whaikaha are fantastic, nobody can question that.
Of course, disabled people should have more control over when and how they receive the care supports that help them be in the best possible position to have as equal a life as possible, compared to the non-disabled (or whichever term you prefer).
But if those principles and the people who talk about them so much can’t influence a better delivery of this new system given all the information and downright proof that it does deliver those better life outcomes, when it works for the individual, then surely something is amiss here.
This new system, if it is to be worthy to its name, must give people the sole determination of how much support they receive. Financial implications for the Ministry be damned.
The example of Faisal Al-Harran in Mana Whaikaha is no isolated incident, but it’s not primarily the fault of just a lack of funding, it’s also down to the decisions that are being made by the NASC (Needs Assessment Coordinators) in the MidCentral and also, clearly, the failure of the connectors working with this man.
Going back to the very beginning of Mana Whaikaha, those who helped co-design the scheme had already aired much concern over the NASC being involved at all. Their objections were likely overruled, and then came the realisation that there weren’t enough connectors, but at that point, it was all systems go, around the time when we started hearing the talk of a ‘try, learn, and adjust approach’.
Those involved took what was being injected financially from Government and went about implementing Mana Whaikaha from October 1st 2018.
Then, the firestorm happened, on a scale that should’ve been predicted but wasn’t.
That firestorm was demand, well over a decade worth of demand for more adequate support that had been unmet, to the point where families were literally uprooting their lives and moving to the MidCentral to sign up. People like Al-Hassan have quickly discovered that Mana Whaikaha and this “bright new future” for disability supports was filling a gap, but not enough of a gap to truly quantify in the “better life outcomes” that he and his family were likely looking for.
But is anyone surprised, really? Likely not, but just who’s responsible for stories like Al-Hassan’s is up for debate.
Stories like this are not isolated, and as time has gone on, it’s become harder and harder for people, especially those newly entered into these new schemes, to get the outcomes they are looking for. In the Waikato, some who entered the Enabling Good Lives demonstration early on (including myself), particularly those with high needs, were able to get more flexibility than those who came later on.
Dig Deeper, Bring The Real Truth To Light
In the wake of April’s revelations that the Ministry of Health was stopped in making radical changes to disability support that would’ve seen $10million cut in the first year and a further $40million the next two years, the same familiar arguments over Government treatment of disabled people have come to light.
In his piece for the Spinoff, long-time disability advocate Chris Ford wrote that he wanted to see a disability support system that allows disabled people to “lead flourishing lives as participating citizens, with the full support of the state”.
But where does the responsibility of Government really sit in the wider picture of improving life outcomes for disabled people? The financials serve as a basis for enabling disabled people to access the supports and the equipment they need to be on a level playing field with everyone else.
All disabled people want and should be asking for is to have the same access to communities, education, services, and employment as their non-disabled peers have. It’s not much to ask and it doesn’t take a mountain of money, but a monumental shift in attitude.
In terms of Mana Whaikaha and the wider Enabling Good Lives direction, the Government is already looking at the costs of this and comparing them to the older services landscape before. If that is the direction and what the Government are mostly looking for in their evaluations, it paints a dark picture moving forward.
The entire system, not just the shiny new parts of it, cannot remain sustainable without a significant funding increase and couldn’t well before now. It requires a long-term commitment to ensure that disabled people and families get the supports that they feel are enough.
That’s the only way this is going to be a successful system for the people. You can have the most flexible support system in the world, but if a person isn’t getting enough to meet their needs, how effective is it really?
For example, if a person needs 24-hour care but can only get 10-hours per day, that system is a total failure for that person.
It’s not about filling gaps in the system to keep providers happy, it’s about filling the needs of the people that this entire sector should be striving to support. We aren’t just talking about the financials either, we are talking about attitude, and for all the talk of a more inclusive and self-determine disability support system in New Zealand, the majority of attitudes in the wake of this sad saga have been anything but.
There needs to be a spoken acknowledgement that the Government can afford to provide substantial funding increases to solve a lot of these problems, and then some. Government does have the purse, a very large one in fact, but do we as disability leaders have the gusto to call their clear and obvious discriminatory practices into question?
It’s one thing to say it at a group meeting or create a petition, it’s quite another to go through each individual case of this systematic abuse and bring it to light. Do that, and you’ll get a clear picture of what’s really going on here.
Real Michael Pulman 