This post is the second of two originally published on LinkedIn🔗.

To understand why we chose to use a service-for-one model, you need to understand our motivation. Our son experienced nearly a decade of service provider delivered day programs and shared supports in accommodation (a group home). This lead to a decline in his and our wellbeing. This is explained in detail on my son’s website – see here🔗.

Essentially …

• Our son exhibited increasing behaviours of concern, including self-harm and physical aggression towards others.
• Support staff seemed ill-equipped and/or unprepared to help our son cope.
• We saw what we considered to be an inappropriate use of medication to manage our son’s behaviour – see our ABC interview🔗.
• Our son was clearly very unhappy with his life – though functionally non-verbal, he regularly made it clear he didn’t want to go to his service provider.

This motivated us to manage our son’s care ourselves – that is, deliver a service-for-one. A blog post on our son’s website explains what we wanted to achieve – see here🔗. We can summarise it in two words, better outcomes! We wanted him to be safe, happy, valued, and have a sense of belonging.

In fact, achieving these kinds of outcome is what the NDIS is all about. Section 3 of the National Disability Insurance Scheme Act 2013🔗, “Objects of Act”, covers …

• Recognising the rights of people with disability – part 3(1)(a)
• Supporting people with disability to participate in life – parts 3(1)(c) and 3(1)(d)
• Letting people with disability have control of their lives – part 3(1)(e)
• Ensure people with disability do not experience harm or abuse – part 3(1)(ga)
• Enable people with disability to participate in life and be included in their community – part 3(1)(h)

The NDIS is a big, complex scheme. It has a lot of moving parts. Activities like provider and worker registration are an important part of the means to an end. In and of themselves, these things are not the end goal we want … it’s better outcomes for our son!