Our plan for provider and worker registration: skilled workers, safe workplaces, quality supports

We hear time and time again, on the one hand, that there are not sufficient safeguards in the disability sector. Workers are frequently underpaid, wage theft is rife, and support work is increasingly unsupervised, and delivered in providers where the regulator lacks visibility.

But you don’t need to register with the regulator to provide NDIS services. That means % of the market aren’t required to ensure workers pass screening checks, or report serious incidents.  

These providers can also undercut those that do comply with registration requirements, audits, and obligations to their workforce – a “race to the bottom” in quality and safeguards.

We also hear that workers lack the tools and resources to deliver support work safely. Support work involves serious skill and supervision, but there’s no minimum level of training required to deliver supports to a vulnerable person, few career pathways in the sector, and little recognition of support work as a profession.

Combined, these factors are causing 1 in 4 workers to leave the sector.

Together with other sector unions, we’re calling on the government to register all providers – to:

• Follow the money, stamp out rorts and rip-offs

• Protect workers from rip-offs through industrial compliance

• Uphold workers’ rights to health and safety

• Support continuous improvement in provider practice and lift quality of supports

• Set basic standards and prevent a “race to the bottom” over quality and safety in a competitive NDIS market

• Ensure visibility and data about the NDIS markets and workforce

We’re also calling for a positive registration and accreditation of disability services workers that:

• Recognises the professional skill of the support workforce  

• Supports workers’ skills development, workforce attraction and retention  

• Upholds the right of people with disability to choice and control  

• Promotes continuous improvement in worker practice and lifts quality of supports.  

• Ensures consistency across jurisdictions and responsiveness to changing needs  

• Is accessible to NDIS participants and providers for verification, credentialling and worker screening  

• Complements a risk-proportionate provider registration and enrolment scheme  

• Can be a structural and value add vehicle for traineeships, portable leave and training entitlements

You can read our full submission the Taskforce here.