Thousands of Australians suffering from disabilities welcomed the launch of the multi-billion-dollar national disability insurance scheme.
Known as DisabilityCare Australia, the first stage of the scheme is up and running in areas across five states, with 26,000 people expected to benefit.
But some of the nation's main organisations representing migrant Australians say significant gaps still exist to address the needs of those from culturally diverse backgrounds.
It comes despite months of panel discussions and recommendations made ahead of this week's launch.
Five official offices for the federal government's Disability Care scheme opened in the Victorian city of Geelong.
Five thousand residents there with significant permanent disabilities are set to receive help from the scheme over the next two years.
But those working among Australia's migrant communities are sceptical.
Diversitat's Michael Martinez works to deliver key services within Geelong's ethnic community.
Mr Martinez says at least 50 of his clients are eligible for DisabilityCare but getting it to them, and effectively, poses unique challenges.
"People, invariably, from migrant refugee backgrounds want to be independent of government. So they don't want to necessarily get assistance, whether it be travel or with personal needs. It is partly the stigma, but it's also their sense of, 'Well, if I do that, then I'm never going to be able to fully integrate.' So a lot of it is the education and the time, actually going and visiting and spending the time with them. I think sometimes what happens is it's very easy if English is not your first language for those kind of service-delivery models not necessarily to support people, you know? So they get forgotten."
Of more than 250,000 residents around Geelong, census data suggests close to one in five were born overseas.
Mr Martinez sees a big gap in the launch of the scheme.
He says there is a lack of qualified translators and they will be crucial to navigating the needs of those with disabilities from migrant backgrounds.
"The regions already suffer from a lack of interpreting services. Usually, you're forced to use the telephone interpreters. And when you're talking about the communities who've been here for a while -- say, for example, the Sudanese or some of the others that have been here longer -- there's a really limited number of qualified (translators), especially as soon as you start talking about health issues ... If it's quite complex, you've got to have the qualification. And there already is enough strain on that system."
Suresh Rajan is president of the National Ethnic Disability Alliance.
He agrees professional interpreters, bilingual workers and multilingual resources are urgently needed.
Especially, he says, in dealing with the nuanced effects of trauma, which can include mental and physical disabilities suffered in their home countries.
"You're looking at someone who's got a dual disadvantage. You're looking at someone who has a disability of some kind which places them at a disadvantage from the mainstream already, and then you have the additional thing of not being English-speaking and (not) being able to access services that are largely provided in English alone."
In submissions to the scheme's advisory board, several of the main organisations representing migrant communities have outlined recommendations to address these needs.
Among them is the use of pictorial resources and audiovisual materials, as well as cultural-competency training for staff.
The National Ethnic Disability Alliance's Suresh Rajan says it is not only about the lack of understanding of English.
"Some of the people who are coming from humanitarian (refugee) backgrounds, in particular, may well be illiterate in their own language, not only in English. So they could be illiterate in their own language primarily because of a lack of opportunity. Under those circumstances, it is appropriate to provide services in a medium that is other than the written word. So you'd have to look at spoken word, you'd have to look at pictorial representations of services, et cetera."
The government says it is working to identify ways Disability Care can best support migrants with disabilities and their communities.
In March, Disability Reform Minister Jenny Macklin heard from people from migrant backgrounds with disabilities at a panel discussion.
The National Ethnic Disability Alliance and the National Disability and Carer Alliance organised the discussion.
But Suresh Rajan says few of the recommendations that came out of it are included in the scheme that has been launched.
"Is some of the feedback being taken into account? It would appear not to be at this stage, because we attended an NDIS, or Disability Care, launch conference in Melbourne over the last weekend, however, there were almost no sessions -- in fact, I can't recall any sessions -- that were done on the culturally and linguistically diverse communities and the non-English-speaking-background communities and the issues of disability in those communities."
Pino Migliorino is president of the Federation of Ethnic Communities Councils of Australia.
He says he is concerned the current test sites do not fairly represent the numbers of those from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds.
That means the hurdles to being identified for care for those in the current test sites will only grow when the scheme is expanded into the nation's multicultural heartlands.
"The concern would be you're not actually building up the experiential capacity, or experiences, to work out how to best position things. To actually run a pilot in a place such as a Fairfield or a Bankstown would really test its capacity to work in an environment which is defined by its diversity. I think the sites that have been chosen are absolutely fine -- I have absolutely no problem with them -- I just think that they won't give us the necessary information that we need at this early stage to be able to tweak, re-craft, re-engineer these services so they are of maximum impact and benefit for ethnic communities."
But Suresh Rajan says he is cautiously optimistic improvements to the scheme will be made in the next six months.
For him, the imperative is clear.
"Over 50 per cent of the population is either born overseas or has one parent born overseas. So, in other words, about half the population is either migrant themselves or a child of a migrant. So we're talking significant numbers."
The Department of Family and Community Services says material has been translated for those communities with the highest numbers of people concerned.
The department says that includes material in Arabic, Cantonese, Greek, Italian, Mandarin, Spanish, Turkish and Vietnamese.
Share
