Last-minute disability service funding decision 'No way of doing business'

Community Disability Alliance Hunter (CDAH) is among those looking to the Federal Government for news of the next funding round.

CDAH's chief executive, Andrew Vodic, said they had been waiting since April.

"This grant process started in November last year," Mr Vodic said.

"We were told straight up then that the process would take until mid-April before we'd be notified, which in our view was already far too long because that meant only ten weeks between knowing whether we were going to be refunded or not, and having to work out how to support people with communication needs to link up with their community and work in five minutes.

"Having only 10 weeks would've been bad enough."

With just six weeks to go before their grant funding ends, the organisation is having to consider redundancies and what to do next.

"It's just no way of doing business," Mr Vodic said.

"And especially with programs that should have always been ongoing funding anyway, not short-term funded projects."

The issue was nationwide, he said, and nobody was any the wiser.

The issue was compounded by the fact that CDAH's workforce is made up of people with disability who would struggle to find meaningful work elsewhere, Mr Vodic said.

"We are looking at possibly the unemployment of up to 14 people with disability plus three or four allies as well," he said.

"And to be waiting this long and to leave people with no meaningful communication from the department has just been a really inappropriate process, or a lack of process, and definitely a lack of communication."

It was difficult to quantify the lost productivity involved, as well as the psychosocial impact on workers, and members of the community they support, he said.

"It absolutely should not come to this," Mr Vodic said.

"We should have known this a long time ago, whether we get the funding or not. This is unchartered territory for most organisations. There's a lot of different organisations out there who we know are already sweating in the same way that we are."

It was difficult to speak out about the issue because the logical 'survival approach' was to eep your head down, Mr Vodic said.

"You don't want to make waves, but we are at a point where ... the ILC funding is becoming secondary to the psychosocial welfare of our team.

"We can't just sit back and watch people crumble while they're waiting for answers.

"That's just inappropriate. And it goes against everything that a government should be promising people who are vulnerable in the community."

The funding, known as ILC funding (Information, Linkages and Capacity Building), supports two CDAH projects.

The first is Community Connections and Deaf Blind Connect, which employs trained people in a peer workforce supporting people leaving large residential centres when they close, to support them to connect with their community.

The second is the Powerful Peers project, which is the development of peer training and education to support people with disability to undertake peer support work.

Peer support work has become a widely recognised approach used in disability as well as mental health, health, child protection spheres, the judicial system, and community services more generally.

No answers have been forthcoming from the federal government which has not given any indication when a decision will be handed down.

A spokeswoman for Minister for the National Disability Insurance Scheme and Government Services, Bill Shorten, told the Newcastle Herald that organisations "would be notified soon".