Budget boosts for disability sector but gaps remain – Jonny Wilkinson

Finance Minister Nicola Willis on Budget Day. Photo / NZME

The Budget giveth and the Budget taketh away!

Its impact on some sectors was resounding but in the disability sector it was somewhat subtle.

Residential Services had a much-needed injection of $60 million a year over the next four years.

This will end the freeze on pricing that was imposed by the Government last year.

Will it elevate the freeze on the number of people in a residential facility?

One would hope so.

There are hundreds of disabled people with high needs who are living with parents who are in their 70s or 80s. When the inevitable time comes for them to leave home, they will need a quality residential solution that will respect their dignity and uphold their mana.

That old cliche rears its head as it does in all new Budgets or policies: “The devil will be in the detail”.

The Honourable Louise Upston has given us a tad of hope in the Budget.

In her Budget press release she stated that, “It will allow for more flexibility and means that from July 1, we are beginning to lift the funding constraints we had to implement last year.”

I am hoping this will mean the restraints that were put on people being able to use their Individualised funding for their disability supports allocation will be lifted. Of course, she could just be alluding to the pricing freeze on residential facilities.

What will have a negative impact on the disability sector are the changes in the Pay Equity Bill that will make it far more difficult to bring about pay equity redress.

The disability support services sector is heavily represented by women who work in that labour market.

This will have a detrimental effect on the sector and probably add to the exodus of workers heading to Aussie, not for the greener pastures but for the fatter pay cheques.

In education, learning support had a huge $646m boost for learning support, 560+ new specialists and 900,000 more teacher aide hours by 2028.

Specialist schools will receive extra classrooms that will hopefully address waiting lists for Special Schools all over the country.

There have been 25 such building projects promised but whether these building projects are already under way, we don’t know yet.

On balance, this Budget isn’t nearly as brutal for the disability sector as the announcements made in March and August last year .

It still doesn’t address the wide traverse in the volume and range of supports available between ACC-funded disability support services and DSS supports.

Until the funding model of disability supports is radically changed in New Zealand to either levy base model like ACC or a National Disability Insurance model as they have in Australia, disability funding will always struggle to meet demand.