Support services for hearing impaired children are failing at a “rapid rate” due to underfunding from the national disability insurance scheme, an inquiry has heard.



The disability sector has warned current NDIS funding is leaving each child about $10,000 short of what is needed each year for a comprehensive and multidisciplinary language development program.

The advocacy body First Voice says that early intervention listening and spoken language services have been making up the shortfall out of their own pockets.

But its chairman, Michael Forwood, told a parliamentary inquiry into the NDIS that making up the shortfall was becoming less feasible as more and more underfunded children entered the scheme.

“The long delay in resolving these matters and addressing the funding deficiency is precipitating market failure at a rapid rate,” Forwood told the inquiry on Wednesday. “Service closures and reductions are already occurring, which will impact on participant choice and on children’s outcomes.”

Forwood also criticised the significant delays in referring children to support services, which he said can take up to three years.

He described that as “highly detrimental to children’s outcomes”.

The scheme, he said, fundamentally misunderstood hearing loss in children. By measuring only observable impairment and disability, it missed hidden hearing impairment in early infancy.

“The NDIA (National Disability Insurance Agency) do not understand hearing loss in children and they do not understand the basic principles of effective early intervention for children who are deaf and hearing impaired to put them on the path that they should be entitled to choose and enjoy,” he said.

The way the NDIS approaches young children is vital to its design. The scheme’s early childhood early intervention pathway was hoped to maximise a child’s ability to participate in the community and economy, and is best described as an investment.



In most states, the government relies on specialist, non-government partner agencies, which act as the first port of call for children and their families, and link them with appropriate early intervention supports.



But the inquiry heard no such partner agency exists in South Australia.



CanDo4Kids, an Adelaide-based service, blamed that, in part, on the NDIA and the way it ran the tender process, which left limited options for organisations to bid for the position.

A key selling point for the NDIS was that it gave individuals more choice and control over their futures.

But JFA Purple Orange, an advocacy group for people with a disability, warned problems with the roll out of the NDIS were putting that principle at risk.

Its CEO, Robbi Williams, said the NDIA was under pressure to meet tight deadlines for the scheme’s roll out, imposed by a series of bilateral agreements between the commonwealth and states and territories.

He said the pressures were causing the NDIA to stray away from the individualised, person-centred approach it was supposed to take to providing support.

“The preoccupation with those markers places extraordinary pressure on the NDIA to hit numeric targets and, in so doing, to not have the fair opportunity to undertake an authentic, person-centred approach with each person in the scheme and their family,” Williams said.

He also warned the bilateral agreements assumed state-based disability support services would be withdrawn as the NDIS rolls out.

“We think that’s an unsafe assumption, and should only be tested once the scheme is at full roll out,” he said. “We are concerned there is a yanking out of resource from existing services at state level that leaves families short.”