The Centre of Research Excellence in Disability and Health is quickly building a body of work on the impacts of COVID-19 on people with disability and on the workers that support them, and making recommendations on what governments and others need to do in response. Professor Anne Kavanagh was questioned by the Royal Commission today on this work and the Centre’s recommendations. She outlined risk factors for both people with disability and disability support workers and noted her concerns about the relatively slow responses by governments to implement measures to safeguard these people from the impacts of COVID.

Providers will be interested to note that Prof Kavanagh indicated the NDIS Commission should have given stronger directives on what services should or should not have continued to be provided during the COVID crisis. She also expressed concern that the 10 per cent loading on some prices for NDIS services during the early days of the pandemic was a perverse incentive for providers to continue providing services that should have ceased.