The National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) is transforming the lives of tons of of hundreds of Australians with a disability. For the primary time, many can get the support they need to live more independently and be a part of society.
Yet the NDIS is failing people with essentially the most severe disabilities: those in housing and intensive care needs.
The overwhelming majority of people in this a part of this system live in group homes, with little alternative about where they live, who they live with, and who provides support. Worse, they face high levels of violence, abuse, neglect, and exploitation.
Intensive housing and housing supports are some of the expensive parts of the NDIS, costing approximately AUD 15 billion in 2023-2024. Although this is a small group – around 7% of all NDIS participants – the whole variety of support packages for these participants is approximately 37% of the whole program expenditure.
At this price, disabled Australians deserve and taxpayers expect top quality services.
New evaluation in latest Grattan Institute study report shows how the federal government can create revolutionary alternatives to group homes that cost the identical or less.
Create alternatives to housing and life support
There are higher alternatives to group homes: these are generally known as individual life arrangements. United Kingdom, Canadaand closer to home, Western Australia reformed housing for people with disabilities and introduced recent housing solutions that supply people greater alternative and a more individualised approach.
Individual housing solutions are integrated into the community as much as possible. They depend on a combination of supports, from formal (hourly paid support employees), to semi-formal (landlords or roommates who receive a subsidy for his or her expenses), to informal (family and friends).
A bunch arrangement is where an adult with a disability in the NDIS lives with a ‘host family’ or ‘host roommate’, who is not related to them, in the host’s home, becoming a part of the household. The host is usually a couple or a person, they usually provide semi-formal support to help with day-to-day activities.
Unai Huizi Photography/Shutterstock
The same arrangement is home-share: an adult with a disability in the NDIS lives in their very own home (either owned or rented) with a housemate who provides support. Hosts and housemates may help with emotional support, companionship, cooking, cleansing, night-time help and other household duties, and receive funding for their very own expenses.
Based on our estimates, individual housing solutions could possibly be cheaper than group homes, which operate on a one-to-three basis (one support employee for 3 disabled residents), as advisable in last 12 months’s Independent NDIS Assessment.
Individual housing solutions cost the identical or lower than group homes, compared to the 1:3 benchmark proposed in the review
NDIS Review (2023); Grattan evaluation of unpublished provider data (2024)
Individually adapted housing is not only cost-effective, but additionally gives people with disabilities the chance to select where they live, who they live with and who supports them.
Share homes, not group homes
Instead of group homes which can be run more like service facilities than people’s homes, we recommend reforms that create shared homes. So when people with disabilities select to live with other people with disabilities and share support, they will select the rhythm of their day by day lives and who cares for them.
Moving to a system where paid support staff time may be shared can dramatically reduce support costs, as this chart shows. This is critical in a system that is facing enormous cost pressures.
We also recommend making systemic changes, including:
- separation of housing and living support in shared accommodation, as Independent NDIS Assessment advisable
- enforceable service agreements (similar to contracts) between disabled people and suppliers
- support from housing and accommodation “navigators” to determine individual living conditions.
- mandatory registration for providers of housing and life support services and unannounced inspections.
To give disabled people the chance to select where to live, the federal government should introduce a rental levy to help disabled people move out of group homes and into the private rental market.
An increasingly common feature of shared homes could be the sharing of each formal and semi-formal support. Combining the economies of scale of co-worker support with semi-formal roommate support can be an economical way of running shared homes in the long run.
Marcos Castillo/Shutterstock
Time for NDIS to come on board
Currently, disabled people have to provide extensive evidence in regards to the support they need and are then told what support they will get and how much – often without ever meeting the choice maker.
People are subsequently forced to choose from different options before they’ve the chance to try alternatives that could be higher, safer and cheaper.
Our proposal is that people with disabilities get a versatile budget up front. Then you may start planning.
People must have access to independent advice to plan their best life inside their budget. The National Disability Insurance Agency should commission housing and living navigators to provide disabled people with this vital support.
We all try different arrangements in life and regularly work out what works best for us. We need information and options to pick from to get the most effective end result – the identical goes for people with disabilities.
Providing the best services for people with essentially the most severe disabilities who need 24/7 support must be a litmus test for any government that wishes to get the NDIS back on the right track. Our research shows that real alternative and higher quality services are close by of Australians with disability – and governments don’t need to spend quite a bit more to do it.