00:0024-year-old Jordan Priest isn't sure about what he wants to do.
00:08He lives with autism and gets financial support from the Disability Support Pension, but he
00:13says it's still not enough to live independently.
00:15I mean, I did sort of expect the prices to be fairly, yeah, fairly high, $500 a week
00:25or whatever.
00:26Sort of a bit soul crushing.
00:29To continue receiving his support pension, Jordan's required to regularly meet with Disability
00:34Employment Services.
00:35It's the government's flagship program for helping people living with disability find
00:40and keep a job.
00:41This can include writing resumes, helping identify areas of interest and connecting
00:46with businesses to secure placements.
00:48But after four years, Jordan says his providers have done little to help and he's still no
00:53closer to finding work.
00:55It really does just feel frustrating at this point.
01:00Not even really just like, at first it was a disappointment and I just kind of sulked
01:04about it.
01:05Now it's just getting frustrating.
01:07Last financial year, the government spent $1.2 billion on Disability Employment Services
01:13or DES, but in the same year, only a third of people using a DES provider got work.
01:19The poor performance of the program was highlighted during the Disability Royal Commission, but
01:23years later, advocates say many of its fundamental issues still remain.
01:28DES has been a problematic program.
01:34It has not met, it's not lived up to its stated goals, its aims and objectives.
01:42Lachlan McLennan was taken off his support pension in 2016 and was forced to engage with
01:48the provider.
01:49It went from about, I think, $1,000 a fortnight to like $500 a fortnight.
01:57It's like financially it was crippling.
02:00Lachlan did get his pension reinstated, but says the experience has had a lasting impact.
02:06The overall result was it made things more difficult than it did to help any sort of
02:10situation.
02:11The financial incentives associated with the scheme have also drawn criticism.
02:16It appears the current DES system incentivises providers doing essentially very little where
02:23they can get away with that.
02:25Providers receive a quarterly fee for everyone on their books and they get a payment when
02:30a client completes a placement.
02:32This structure sometimes results in the most employable people getting priority while others
02:37with more complex needs get less help.
02:40What we've seen is that people come in and they don't get the most human-centric service
02:48that they could have received.
02:50Disability Employment Australia is the peak body for the vast majority of providers.
02:55If you're delivering into a society and labour market where there's still lots of exclusion,
03:00where there's still lots of ableism, that also constrains the ability of DES to be successful.
03:06The recent budget increased funding to disability employment services to $5.4 billion over the
03:12next five years.
03:13What assurances or what was your message to people that might say reforms have been made
03:17to DES in the past and with middling success, why would it be different this time?
03:22We believe by putting the person with disability at the centre of this and pushing DES providers
03:30for continuous improvement to meet the needs of individuals, we think that that will deliver results.
03:37It just really feels like it just goes absolutely nowhere because they just approach everybody
03:41the same way and it doesn't necessarily seem to work for everybody.
03:46But advocates say restoring trust in the system will take time.
03:50So there's a lot of work to be done but we feel confident that change can happen because
03:55to be honest, the alternative is too painful to think about.
04:00For more UN videos visit www.un.org
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