Social insurance for individualised disability support: implementing the Australian National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS)

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christiane Purcal ◽  
Karen R. Fisher ◽  
Ariella Meltzer
Keyword(s):  
Social Service ◽  
Social Insurance ◽  
Disability Insurance ◽  
Insurance Scheme ◽  
Action Research Project ◽  
New Approach ◽  
The Public ◽  
Service Support ◽  
Disability Support ◽  
Insurance Model

Australia is implementing an ambitious new approach to individualised disability support based on a social insurance model. In a world first, the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) is funded through a levy on income and general taxation and gives Australians with disability an entitlement to social service support. This chapter describes the NDIS approach and implementation so far and summarises concerns and challenges about the NDIS discussed in the literature. It uses data from an action research project to inform feasibility questions about how people find out about and receive the individualised support they need. The chapter highlights a basic gap in people’s familiarity with what individualised support is, how it works and how they might benefit from the new approach. A policy implication is that, with the expansion of individualised support, the public is likely to need various opportunities and forms of information sharing, to explore and learn from each other about what the new approach is and what its possibilities are.

‘The age of entitlement has ended’: designing a disability insurance scheme in turbulent times

2017 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 95-113 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pavla Miller
Keyword(s):  
Social Insurance ◽  
Path Dependence ◽  
Disability Insurance ◽  
Insurance Scheme ◽  
Transformative Potential ◽  
Turbulent Times ◽  
General Revenue ◽  
Unpaid Labour ◽  
Policy Analysts ◽  
Liberal Government

AbstractIn a period of welfare state retrenchment, Australia's neo-liberal government is continuing to implement an expensive National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS). Australia is among the pioneers of welfare measures funded from general revenue. Until recently, however, attempts to establish national schemes of social insurance have failed. The paper reviews this history through the lenses of path dependence accounts. It then presents contrasting descriptions of the NDIS by its Chair, the politician who inspired him, and two feminist policy analysts from a carers’ organisation. Path dependence, these accounts illustrate, has been broken in some respects but consolidated in others. In particular, the dynamics of ‘managed’ capitalist markets, gendered notions of abstract individuals and organisations, and the related difficulties in accounting for unpaid labour are constraining the transformative potential of the NDIS.

scholarly journals Reflections on the role of less-than-comprehensive (exclusionary) private health insurance hospital products in the Australian healthcare system

2012 ◽  
Vol 36 (3) ◽  
pp. 273 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter E. Thomas
Keyword(s):  
Health Insurance ◽  
Social Insurance ◽  
Private Health Insurance ◽  
Insurance Scheme ◽  
Policy Issues ◽  
The Public ◽  
Insurance Policies ◽  
Exclusionary Policies ◽  
First Time

The number of people in Australia that are currently covered by a hospital private health insurance product continues to rise every quarter. In September 2010, for the first time since the introduction of the public universal social insurance scheme, Medicare, more than 10 million persons in Australia are covered by private health insurance. Although the number of persons covered by private health insurance continues to grow, the quality and level of cover that members are holding is changing significantly. In an effort to limit premium rises and to reduce the benefits paid for treatment, private health insurers have introduced, and moved a large number of existing members to, less-than-comprehensive private health insurance policies. These policies, known as ‘exclusionary’ policies, are changing the dynamics of private health insurance in Australia. After examining the emergence and prevalence of these products, this commentary gives three different examples to illustrate how such products are changing the nature of private health insurance in Australia and are now set to create a series of policy issues that will require future attention.

scholarly journals 1490Activist and Epidemiologist: Collision or Synergy?

2021 ◽  
Vol 50 (Supplement_1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne Kavanagh
Keyword(s):  
Lived Experience ◽  
Expert Witness ◽  
Disability Insurance ◽  
Government Policies ◽  
Royal Commission ◽  
Disabled People ◽  
Insurance Scheme ◽  
Epidemiological Research ◽  
Disability Support ◽  
Knowledge Claims

Abstract Focus of Presentation In this presentation, I discuss how activism and lived experience can enhance epidemiological research. I argue that my lived experience of disability and activism, enhance my research because I: have understanding of the contexts in which disabled people live, I focus on what is relevant to disabled people, and have the impetus to interrogate government knowledge claims. I illustrate this through two research/activism scenarios: COVID-19 pandemic proposed reforms to Australia’s National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) – which provides individual budgets for nearly 500,000 Australians with disability. Findings During the COVID-19, I spearheaded ‘calls to action’ for governments to respond to the specific risks faced by people with disability. I led a research demonstrating the risks to disability support workers. My expert witness testimonies at the Disability Royal Commission were central to the Commission’s recommendations. And my work changed government policies relating to managing outbreaks in disability settings and vaccination. In relation to the NDIS, I have critiqued the research government conducts, and the data they use, to support their arguments for reform. Conclusions/Implications Being an activist with lived experience requires reflexivity to ensure individual biases are not reinforced, but it also offers opportunities. Research is contextualised and the pathway to change more easily charted. Epidemiology should foster the careers of researchers with lived experience who maybe activists as well. Key messages Lived experience researchers and activists can enhance epidemiological research bringing unique insights and new opportunities for change.

scholarly journals Supporting Choice and Control—An Analysis of the Approach Taken to Legal Capacity in Australia’s National Disability Insurance Scheme

Laws ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily Cukalevski
Keyword(s):  
Support Services ◽  
Disability Insurance ◽  
Legal Capacity ◽  
Insurance Scheme ◽  
Major Step ◽  
Persons With Disabilities ◽  
Disability Support Services ◽  
Disability Support ◽  
Political Right ◽  
And Control

In mid-2013, the Australian federal government introduced the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS), a ground-breaking reform of disability support services, encapsulated by the mantra of increasing “choice and control”. The scheme provides eligible persons with disabilities a legislated entitlement to supports they may require to increase their independence and social and economic participation. The NDIS has been hailed as a major step forward in Australia’s efforts to realize the human rights of persons with disabilities, in accordance with the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). A core aspect of the CRPD is guaranteeing persons with disabilities their civil and political right to equality before the law, including their right to enjoy legal capacity on an equal basis with others, as provided by Article 12 of the CRPD. The purpose of this paper is to examine how the concept of choice and control has been operationalized within the NDIS and to critically analyze the extent to which it accords with the requirements of Article 12. It will be argued that even though the NDIS expressly seeks to implement the CRPD as one of its key objectives, it ultimately falls short in fully embracing the obligations of Article 12 and the notions of autonomy and personhood underlying it.

You are here! Negotiating liminality in place in the context of the National Disability Insurance Scheme

2020 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 359-379
Author(s):  
Paul Ramcharan ◽  
Christina David ◽  
Katie Marx
Keyword(s):  
Community Development ◽  
Social Workers ◽  
Service Innovation ◽  
Disability Insurance ◽  
Community Action ◽  
Participatory Action ◽  
Insurance Scheme ◽  
Action Research Project ◽  
Liminal Spaces ◽  
The Rich

The dynamics of inclusion and exclusion for people with disabilities and the places in which they live are being challenged in Australia with the transition to the National Disability Insurance Scheme. This paper reports on the experiences of a place-based and participatory action research project in regional Tasmania which sought to co-create citizenship opportunities with co-researchers living with disability. We report on our experience of negotiating this ambitious and emergent project through the uncertain and shifting terrain of the contemporary neoliberal policy and service context. We highlight the rich gains as well as the significant relational, contextual and procedural challenges of operationalising and staying true to bottom up and strengths-based community development principles. Key learnings relate to risks of creating liminal spaces for community action, about power and authority, and about the skills, resources and labour needed to unearth and mobilise individual and community strengths. We argue that there remains a significant tension between the aspirations of collective action and contemporary services and policy structures that reproduce liminality, silent positioning and place denial. This research challenges traditional disability centric notions of inclusion and place and has implications for the NDIS, for policies at risk of reproducing disabling dynamics, for service innovation and collaboration and for all social workers and others working to develop more inclusive communities.

Social versus Private Insurance

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pierre Pestieau ◽  
Mathieu Lefebvre
Keyword(s):  
Social Insurance ◽  
Private Insurance ◽  
Population Ageing ◽  
Fiscal Competition ◽  
Public Insurance ◽  
The Public ◽  
Social Risks ◽  
The Family ◽  
Private And Public

This chapter looks at the role of the public versus the private sector in the provision of insurance against social risks. After having discussed the evolution of the role of the family as support in the first place, the specificity of social insurance is emphasized in opposition to private insurance. Figures show the extent of spending on both private and public insurance and the chapter presents economic reasons to why the latter is more developed than the former. Issues related to moral hazard and adverse selection are addressed. The chapter also discusses somewhat more general arguments supporting social insurance such as population ageing, unemployment, fiscal competition and social dumping.

scholarly journals The Solved Conflict: Pope Francis and Liberation Theology

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ole Jakob Løland
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Liberation Theology ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
New Approach ◽  
Pope Francis ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
The Public ◽  
Gustavo Gutierrez ◽  
Global Church

AbstractThe battle for meaning and influence between Latin American liberations theologians and the Vatican was one of the most significant conflicts in the global Catholic church of the twentieth century. With the election of the Argentinean Jorge Mario Bergoglio as head of the global church in 2013, the question about the legacy of liberation theology was actualized. The canonization of Archbishop Oscar Romero and the pope’s approximation to the public figure of Gustavo Gutiérrez signaled a new approach to the liberation theology movement in the Vatican. This article argues that Pope Francis shares some of the main theological concerns as pontiff with liberation theology. Although the pope remains an outsider to liberation theology, he has in a sense solved the conflict between the Vatican and the Latin American social movement. Through an analysis of ecclesial documents and theological literature, his can be discerned on three levels. First, Pope Francis’ use of certain theological ideas from liberation theology has been made possible and less controversial by post-cold war contexts. Second, Pope Francis has contributed to the solution of this conflict through significant symbolic gestures rather than through a shift of official positions. Third, as Pope Francis, the Argentinian Jorge Mario Bergoglio has appropriated certain elements that are specific to liberation theology without acknowledging his intellectual debt to it.

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