Privatised HomeCare and NDIS funding questions

She says her son’s NDIS account is going down so quickly that she fears it will be spent eight months into the year, and she is calling on the NDIS to make changes to ensure service providers give regular accounts to their customers.

Last month, the Newcastle Herald reported on the situation surrounding Ms Lhota, who lives at Mallabula, and her son Graham Roberts, of Tanilba Bay, over the privatised HomeCare services provided by Australian Unity.

Ms Lhota said Australian Unity acknowledged it did not have the staff to provide a seven-day service, and so she and her son used the portability of his NDIS funding to have another provider make up the days that Australian Unity could not cover.

But because of the rules surrounding the giving of injections, Ms Lhota said her son needed a registered nurse to give him his twice-daily epipen injection, which involved “pressing the pen against his stomach and pushing.

“If I’m there I am allowed to do it but if not, a care worker can’t, it has to be a registered nurse,” Mrs Lhota said. “They charge $92 an hour for a registered nurse on a minimum call out of 90 minutes, plus travel time.

“It works out at $320 a day for five minutes each morning and afternoon. My son’s package is about $250,000 a year but at the rate it’s going it will be lucky to last until August .”

Ms Lhota said the NDIS portal did not give detailed information on how her son’s money was being spent but when she asked the service provider for a statement they said they did not have to provide one.

She said her son’s HomeCare services had been much better before it was privatised, and she had written to the state government about the problems he had faced.

The Disability Services Minister Ray Williams wrote to Ms Lhota on March 10, thanking her for writing but advising that because her son received NDIS funding, he had referred her concerns to the federal Assistant Minister for Social Services and Disability Services, Jane Prentice.