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This is a summary of the Participant Reference Group’s (PRG) recent meeting. The PRG consists of 23 participant and carer representatives across Australia.

The Australian Government is taking action against some unscrupulous providers who are exploiting the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) by encouraging thousands of participants to spend their NDIS funding too quickly and on non-disability supports. This week, the National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIA) and the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission have taken the initiative to write to plan managers and support coordinators who support NDIS participants, reminding them of their obligations. Earlier this month, both the Federal Budget and the NDIA’s Quarterly Report showed that intra plan inflation was a major cause of growth in the Scheme. NDIS Minister Bill Shorten said the letter to plan managers also reflects anonymised data matching between 900 NDIS plan manager ABNs and the ATO, which showed that 343 of those ABNs would have failed a statement of tax record at the time.

The NDIA and NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission is writing jointly to all Plan Managers and Support Coordinators who support participants to remind them of their obligations to meet record keeping responsibilities and conflict-of-interest obligations, not engage in practices which facilitate the misuse of NDIS funds and comply with all Commonwealth, State and Territory laws, including tax obligations.

This is a summary of the Participant Reference Group’s (PRG) recent meeting. The PRG consists of 22 participant and carer representatives across Australia. The PRG is a key platform to ensure the participant voice is heard and understood by the NDIA.

An occupational therapist who was found guilty of 22 counts of obtaining financial advantage by deception has been sentenced to six years in prison, with a non-parole period of four years, a sign of the Government’s commitment to crack down on fraud against the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS).