Morrissey

‘Each of my psychosocial disabilities has become worse since joining the NDIS. I spend pretty much all day every day locked in my room because I’m too scared to interact with people.’

Morrissey is in her 20s. She is autistic and has post-traumatic stress disorder and a nervous system disorder.

‘I grew up with domestic violence and I have quite severe PTSD from that,’ she told the Royal Commission. ‘I have difficulty with executive functioning to a really severe extent.’

A few years ago, the NDIS assessed Morrissey’s support needs and decided to move her into supported independent living.

Morrissey has since lived in five disability accommodation houses. The first one kicked her out, when ‘all the money was drained’ out of her plan.

‘They had other participants who were more profitable than me who they were going to move into the house.’

She feels providers put the needs of other residents above hers.

‘The second time I was made homeless it was because of a gentleman who had more funding than I did. He was uncomfortable around me and his behaviour escalated to the point that it was no longer safe for us to live together. And the provider said to me, “Look, financially it makes more sense for us to keep him on.”’

Morrissey switched houses after getting a new provider and new support workers. But instead of giving her the 11 hours of dedicated support her funding provided for, the provider ‘rationed’ it out among residents. ‘So one support worker to three participants,’ she said.

Eventually, again, she was ‘booted out’.

‘Basically I wasn’t high enough needs to have enough funding to be worth providers’ time.’

Morrissey said it is unjust for companies to arbitrarily decide to end services to a person with disability.

‘One of the reasons is because in practice the accommodation is so rare. The need outweighs supply.’

Morrissey then moved into another house, sharing with a woman with ‘severe psychosocial disability’.

‘I think a lot of her meltdowns and stuff were triggering my PTSD. When she’d have a meltdown, she would scream in her room that she was going to kill herself. She would punch the wall in between our rooms and do stuff like that … It’s intimidating.’

When she wanted to switch homes, the provider accused her of being ‘unstable’ and turned the blame on her.

‘Like, why do you have difficulties living with people? … The issue is living where someone is punching the walls all the time, or throwing the furniture. And see how long it takes to have a mental breakdown. After living in the house share … I ended up in hospital.’

Through all this, Morrissey believes the NDIS neglected her needs. The agency left her ‘at the mercy of providers’ with constant threats of ‘a reduction in support’.

She wants funding reviews to be less of an ‘adversarial process’.

‘It’s really damaging. I cannot tell you the amount of trauma I experience before every NDIS review.’

Morrissey feels the plan should stay the same ‘unless there’s a change in circumstance’.

Recently she won an administrative appeals case against the NDIS to live alone and feels ‘incredibly lucky to have had such fantastic representation’.

‘Legal Aid doesn’t have enough funding to represent all the people who want to challenge NDIS decisions. So you end up with either an advocate or nobody at all and having to go up against, like, corporate level lawyers by yourself. Many people don’t have the same advantages that I did.’