18 March Whaikaha announcement

Kia ora

Whaikaha announced some significant changes to the disability funding yesterday on their Facebook page yesterday. 

Share your feedback here

Most of you also will have received an email from Whaikaha (if not, you may need to update your details through the EMS portal)

That email included  EMS priority guidance and a new prioritisation process and form which can be read on their website:

https://www.whaikaha.govt.nz/for-service-providers/equipment-and-modification-services

Their correspondence included the following details:

• the new prioritisation process will be implement for all equipment and modification requests (except band 1)
• assessors will need to complete a prioritisation form and whether the request falls under priority one or priority two
• assessment services will need to have a clinical lead review or a quality process to monitor the percentage of priority one applications being submitted by their service

The prioritisation form includes the following criteria

• The person is unable to express themselves effective or reliably which impacts on their ability to communicate resulting in imminent risk of harm to themselves, their carers or their dependents.
• The child or young person is attending education and unable to continue with school attendance

Many of us are still in the process of sorting out what this will means in practice. We know some of you work on very small teams, or even  a 'team' of one.  Some of you do many applications per year and others only a few.  We don't yet know what the definition of imminent risk or harm means nor how barriers to school attendance is to be interpreted. 

We first and foremost want to acknowledge that uncertainly like this can be stressful.  Many of our clients will also be experiencing stress around the changes to how they can use their disability funding.  Take care of yourselves!

As an organisation, we would like to draft a letter to Whaikaha sharing our members questions and concerns.

If you have any questions or concerns, we are collecting them via the following survey (answer as many or as few questions as you wish):

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfpvDGvNAauhjnEUq402juehcWajVVyp4C8Ju9fGNufDRS3KA/viewform?usp=sf_link

Ngā mihi nui

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