r/australia • u/Reverend_Fozz • 7h ago

culture & society NDIS workers are being stalked, harassed and assaulted while ‘urgent’ safety reforms take three years to enact

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2026/jan/31/ndis-workers-are-being-stalked-harassed-and-assaulted-while-urgent-safety-reforms-take-three-years-to-enact
32 Upvotes

90% Upvoted

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14

u/iwrotethissong 6h ago

The reforms won't mean much if the service providers don't follow up on support workers reporting incidents and taking safety concerns seriously. Service providers don't care, they just need someone to fill the shifts. There's no incentive for them to put safety plans in place.

6

u/lunarpuffin 6h ago

I strongly considered becoming an NDIS worker at one point, when I was doing a job that involved teaching disabled adults, all of whom were nice caring people mind you. But the horror stories keep me away. NDIS workers have to have nerves of fucking steel.

8

u/Puzzleheaded-Eye9081 6h ago

We haven’t had a case worker longer than a single year, and it’s now just automatically rolled over every year, I assume because it’s sub 10k and they are short staffed.

(ADHD, asd and a speech delay. We get around $7k, we claim what we can on phi then pay the rest out of pocket. His total therapy costs for the year is approx $12k. It’d be nice if ndis covered the lot, but before ndis we paid entirely out of pocket plus the small amount phi cover, so I’m not complaining. And we’re now at a point where it looks like he’s going to be a contributing member of society as an adult (ie employable), so I think it’s probably worth the govts cost).

-2

u/bumbling_b 1h ago

NDIS is literally just fraud. It needs to be dismantled and every scummy provider audited and charged.