Does the Australian National Disability Insurance Scheme
enhance personal quality of life?
enhance personal quality of life?
by David Treanor
The National
Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) is a radical paradigm shift that moves the
administration, quality framework and service delivery of disability services into
the economic market-place in Australia.
The NDIS is the largest government reform since the introduction of
Medicare in Australia under the Whitlam Government in the early 1970s. The NDIS
was introduced in 2013 and will, if the roll-out is successful, be fully
operationalized by 2020. The NDIS aims to ameliorate the limitations in the
prior funding and monitoring state and territory based systems and is grounded
in a rhetoric of ‘person-centered’ planning.
As a personalist the author explores this notion of
‘personal-planning’ and how ‘personal’ is it? And how congruent it might be with
John Macmurray personalism? Macmurray
offers critical insights into our human nature, which suggests that personal
flourishing, friendships have a valued role and are integral to our nature as
persons. Macmurray is perceptive in understanding who a person is, he moves
beyond the focus that is emphasized of persons as mere a material or
mechanistic being and argues our development is best met through a relational
being who excels through interdependent relationships. The paper reveals that
though the NDIS honours Australia’s commitment to it’s international
responsibilities under the 2006 Convention on the Rights of Persons with
Disabilities (CRPD), that is it has a broad personalist philosophy. Nonetheless,
the analysis through a Macmurrian prism exposes the schemes shortcomings in its
ability to enhance human nature of people with an intellectual disability that
improves people’s quality of life. This argument follows the analysis of
current data reports, as case studies, centered on the NDIS, and suggests that
while the NDIS has improved some personal lives a more concentrated focus on Macmurrain
human nature and relationships is more likely to support the scheme to achieve
its overall objectives.
- https://doi.org/10.1080/23297018.2017.1408420
No comments:
Post a Comment