Callam

‘Things are meant to be getting better with … the NDIS. The NDIS thought that the market would catch up. It would be driven by a free market. But it’s not. It’s getting worse.’  

Callam is in his 50s and has physical disability. He runs a service provider.

‘It used to be a profession for a lot of my home care workers. You know they did it for 10, 20, 30 years. Now the majority of people that want to work in this sector, it’s just a passing job they’re doing while they’re at uni or they can’t get another job or whatever reason they join the profession. And I don’t think it’s the right reason.’

Callam said the quality of disability health care also declined after the introduction of the NDIS. After the accident that caused his disability three decades ago, he was out of hospital and back home within 11 months.

‘Before the NDIS they had it down to four-and a-half, five months. That’s from a newly acquired high level spinal cord injury to home, right? So you … don’t become institutionalised. It was brilliant. I don't know what the outcome is now, but I know it’s up around about a year again. It’s not good enough.’

When Callam fell ill recently an ambulance took him to the closest hospital, which doesn’t have a specialist spinal unit.

‘They couldn’t look after me … They worked out that there was something wrong with me, but they didn’t know what.’

The next morning a doctor told Callam to take a taxi to the spinal unit at another hospital.

Callam said a friend with quadriplegia died from a twisted bowel because an ambulance took him to the same local hospital where the doctors ‘didn’t know what to do with him’.

‘We call it the quad killer. They kill quadriplegics. We’ve been told, “Don’t go there, you won’t come out.” You know, they don’t understand autonomic dysreflexia, they don’t understand a twisted bowel, they just don’t get it.’

Callam said most medical professionals ‘don’t have an understanding of disability’ and need more training.

‘I’ve been up to my GP practice on three occasions to educate them about autism, about spinal cord injury,’ Callam told the Royal Commission. ‘They’ll tell you outright, “We don’t really deal with disability. It’s more of a specialist area.”’

‘GPs aren’t trained in disability, hospital staff aren’t trained in disability. My biggest fear is winding up in hospital without one of my support workers … Health needs to start talking to the NDIS and we need to train health professionals in how we look after people with disability.’

Callam said it’s also increasingly difficult to access good allied health professionals because it costs too much for them to register with the NDIS. 

‘People are exiting in droves and the main reason is because of the compliance. So an [occupation therapist] OT … was given a quote of $14,000 to have their audit done so that they could be registered. They’re a sole trader. They’re not going to spend 14 grand.’

He said it’s one reason why people with disability in rural areas struggle to get help. Two of Callam’s friends who live outside the city, one with paraplegia and another with a daughter who’s autistic, control big support plans.

‘Lots of funding [for] behavioural support, speech therapy, occupational therapy, but when there’s no speech therapist, there’s no occupational therapist, there’s no behavioural specialist down there, what’s the point?’