NDIS Update 19 - Practical Design Fund

Date published : 8  August  2012 

Dear Friends

In our last update we gave you the exciting news that the first stage of a National Disability Insurance Scheme will launch in New South Wales, South Australia, Tasmania and the ACT.

We're getting on with the job of building an NDIS - working with the states and territories, and with people with disability, their families and carers, service providers and the disability community to get the launch sites up and running and the detailed design for an NDIS right.

On Saturday we announced that applications have opened for the Australian Government's $10 million Practical Design Fund.

The Practical Design Fund will help identify how best to support people with disability and their carers, the disability sector and the workforce to transition to new ways of accessing and delivering disability services under an NDIS. For example, projects could:

  • Identify the best ways to support people with disability to exercise choice and control over the care and support they receive;
  • Suggest ways to deliver different types of services to people with disability in regional and remote areas, for example by using new technologies; or
  • Identify how best to support disability service providers to transition to a new person-centred approach to care and support, where choice is in the hands of people with disability.

We're calling for project applications because we know there is a lot of expertise out there - expertise in the lived experience of disability. This advice will be essential to getting the design of an NDIS right.
Applications close at 2pm on Monday 3 September 2012. For further information on the Practical Design Fund go to: http://www.fahcsia.gov.au/disability-and-carers/grants-funding/practical-design-fund

Jenny Macklin & Jan McLucas


Return to the News