Anxiety 'escalating' in young people as pandemic closes disability supports

26 April 2020

Disability advocates say they are concerned about an increase in anxiety among children whose support services have been stripped back during the coronavirus pandemic.

Paul Watters has not been able to explain to his teenage daughters why they cannot do the things they normally love to do.

Bounty, 15, and Arwen, 17, have nonverbal autism and cannot recognise letters.

“Bounty will come in at one o’clock in the morning and she’ll wake me up and take me through to the computer so we can cycle through all those pictures of things that she wants to see and do but she can’t,” Mr Watters said.

In the family’s master bedroom a hole has been made in the plasterboard that is bigger than a dinner plate.

“Which is where she’s had some frustration and she’s jumped up on the bed and put her head through the wall,” Mr Watters said.

“That was during the COVID outbreak.”

Paul Watters outside his Ballarat home. Paul Watters outside his Ballarat home.
Paul Watters says the loss of disability support services is creating an enormous stress for families.(ABC Ballarat: Charlotte King)

Mr Watters said it was impossible for his daughters to learn online and insisted on taking them to their specialist school each day.

But Mr Watters said other supports his family relied on each week, like respite care programs, had all stopped.

“And it’s not just group programs,” he said.

“We’ve been waiting for a whole lot of sensory equipment to be installed in Bounty’s room, which only requires two people on site.

“The provider in that case has completely shutdown operations.”

‘Nobody likes this situation’

Social distancing rules have forced disability providers to change their service delivery.

National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) providers are obligated to keep participants safe from the risk of infection.

They are also required to “take all reasonable action” to continue disability supports that are critical to a client’s health and wellbeing.

The National Disability Insurance Agency says it’s in the process of reaching out to 62,000 high-risk participants, and is contacting more than 2,000 per day.

The National Disability Insurance Scheme Commission has told the ABC that if support services have been withdrawn without consultation, participants should contact the Quality and Safeguards Commission.

“Nobody likes this situation but it is the reality of what we’re having to deal with in a person-to-person sector.”

Paul Watters’s disability provider, Pinarc, told the ABC it closed its programs after 90 per cent of participants withdrew from the service, and it advised families of the changes.

The organisation said the decision was “gut-wrenching” and was made after discussions with other providers and after the Victorian Government’s instructed school students to learn from home.

Pinarc has started offering group programs online, along with its other therapeutic programs, and said it would look at expanding them if there was demand.

Anxiety ‘escalating’ among young people

The NDIS Commission said it had given extensive advice to providers about their obligations, including information on strategies to maintain a continuity of supports.

It said the Federal Health Department was in the process of implementing an emergency response plan, drafted this month, aimed at people with disabilities.

The Government has launched a dedicated helpline for people with disability who are concerned or have questions about coronavirus (COVID-19).

People with disability, their families and carers can contact the Disability Information Helpline on 1800 643 787.

But advocates are unimpressed.

She has spent the weekend collating the results from a member survey into the effects of COVID-19.

Almost 40 per cent of respondents said supports had been cancelled during the pandemic, by either the participant or the provider.

One in five people who completed the survey said they, or their child, had experienced a decline in their mental health.

“We do need to make sure that we take lessons from this crisis because families and children are hurting at the moment.”

Mr Watters said the situation for many families was becoming desperate.

“Of course, you can take medication to help with this sort of stuff; anti-depressants and those sorts of things,” he said.

“But long-term it’s about trying to improve the situation rather than take more medication,” he said.

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