NDIS funding for specific learning difficulties

In this episode, we chat with Kate Cole, a determined parent who managed to secure NDIS funding for her child living with dyslexia. Kate tells us exactly how she did it!

 

In this episode, we chat with Kate Cole, who tells her NDIS funding story. Kate tells us why she applied and how she navigated multiple rejections to ultimately have her funding approved.

It’s a story we hope you will find encouraging, useful and enlightening, as we did. So, if you live in Australia and know or support somebody living with a specific learning difficulty, this episode may be a game changer.

What is the NDIS?

The National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) is for people in Australia under 65, living with permanent and significant disability.

• Permanent means the disability will not go away.
• Significant means the disability affects how you live every day.

Both of these criteria can apply to people living with specific learning difficulties.

  NDIS and Dyslexia – Kate's story in her own words

Our daughter is a bright, happy, funny girl who is just a joy to be around. We began to have concerns about her literacy skills when was quite young. While her peers were able to recognise letters of the alphabet, she struggled to recall common letters, including those in her name from a young age. This was in contrast to the skills she displayed when performing other tasks as part of daily life – which she really excelled at! Our daughter settled well into school but struggled with basic literacy tasks from the beginning. By the end of Year 1 we requested her school to allow her to repeat Year 1 again. We were told that repeating her would only be allowed upon completion of a psychometric assessment, an assessment by an independent speech pathologist, an assessment by an occupational therapist. We arranged the necessary tests.

Through Year 1 and 2, her school provided some support – Reading Recovery and MiniLit. In addition, we organised speech pathology & tutoring to help her. But by the end of Term 3, Year 2 it was evident that the support available within her school was insufficient to enable her to continue learning in that environment. We had had our daughter “tested” for countless things based on recommendations from the school – ADHD, eyesight problems, intellectual delays etc. None were really helpful. Our daughter is very well behaved, is a gun at ball sports and excels at mathematics. It was as though her school really did not understand her strengths at all.

We made the decision to enrol our daughter in a different school commencing in Year 3. From the start, her new teacher contacted us to discuss concerns with her literacy. She was great. A further assessment by a speech pathologist was recommended, as was a referral to a Neuropsychologist. We were blown away with his findings. Essentially it showed she had a Specific Learning Disorder that impacted reading and writing only (dyslexia). It was also very clear that this was not related to an intellectual disability and that there were certain interventions were never going to work given her condition. The Neuropsychologist also provided very specific and clear recommendations for both school and for at home which were very useful.

From that point onwards, her new school helped by providing in-class support, free access to evidence-based literacy interventions, MaqLit, assistive technology (e.g. “C-pen”), and access to learning support and a scribe. We supplemented this with regular speech pathology every week. This is all amazing while our daughter is at school. But what I think some fail to realise is that children also need to access texts and write things down when they are not at school – supports are still needed outside of an educational setting. This is why we applied to the NDIS.

Here is our Timeline: May 2019

We applied for access to the NDIS for our daughter’s primary impairment of a Severe Specific Learning Disorder with impairment with reading and written expression. We explained that our daughter had received evidence-based treatment from speech pathologist(s) since the age of 4 targeting literacy development, all with minimal improvement. She had also participated in multiple literacy interventions at school. I sought access to the NDIS for continued targeted evidence-based literacy programs to lift basic literacy proficiency as much as is possible within the context of her SLD. In the context of functional impairments, I sought access to the use of assistive technology for her learning.

July 2019

We were informed that our NDIS Access Request was not successful. Specifically, the requirements that were stated not to be met were:

• Section 24(1)(c) relating to an impairment” that re