Belinda

Carer/family of a person with disability

The government needs to look at the term disability and not make it so broad. People who are jobseekers that don’t want to have to look for full time work are claiming they have disabilities to become DES participants on things like drug dependencies, asthma etc. I believe that to be a DES participant you should have to be receiving a disability pension or a sickness benefit to qualify. No newstart allowance participants. People with genuine disabilities are missing out on time from providers due to the high number of newstart participants.

Also service providers should have to employ a person solely for the ongoing support role so that participants can receive the time needed to help them stay in the job. A lot of people drop out of jobs purely because the service provider is not funded for the amount of hours needed for on the job support.