‘Speak your truth’: Disability Support Services boss encourages honest feedback in community consultation

After changes to disability funding on March 18th last year, we know times have been difficult for many in our communities - disabled folks, whānau and carers alike. And now this year, the Ministry of Social Development (MSD) which looks after Disability Support Services (DSS) is seeking feedback from disability communities on further changes to the funding and support system.

It can be hard for many of us to understand exactly what these consultations are all about, so we thought it might be worth hearing directly from those running the process. One of those people is Chris Bunny, deputy chief executive Disability Support Services at MSD. He himself describes experiences “the most frustrating engagement with DSS and the wider government over the years” as a parent to a disabled son and “there's a lot of things not to like about the system”, he says. 

He acknowledged last year was “a pretty tough year for everyone in the community”, with a lot of anger, fear and uncertainty. But he is committed to making real, lasting improvements for the disabled community and the Government has “a lot of the things they need to be able to do better with”.

He describes the consultation as “a great platform for change” that seeks feedback on two things around DSS: the assessment process and flexible funding rules. 

MSD wants to ensure assessments improve for people going through a NASC centre, that it reflects the diversity of disability and looks at the role and the considerations around, family, whānau so it continues to “meet the needs of this disabled person”.

Regarding flexible funding, while some people might wonder why the rules don’t just go back to pre-March 18th settings, Bunny says “it wasn't all rosy [prior to that date] and it certainly wasn't fair or equitable across the motu”. He says the two options being explored around option funding is to rewrite and clarify rules and guidelines around the way flexible funding works so it is more equitable. The second option is for individualised funding to be more goal-oriented around the person. 

He is encouraging disabled people to participate in the consultation in person or online, and there are options for DIY workshops too. “You might think I might not wanna hear it, but I need to know it,” Bunny says. “So, let us know your thoughts.”

While many of us might feel like we’ve been here before and are reluctant to trust the consultation process, if we want to have any chance of influencing the outcome, this is the time to share our opinions.  

Watch the interview or read the transcript below.

Red Nicholson: Kia ora Chris Bunny thanks for making time for us here at The D*List. Do you want to start by introducing yourself? 

Chris Bunny: Thanks, Red. Kia ora to you too and kia ora to viewers. Great to have the opportunity to come and speak to D*List and the wider community. As you mentioned, my name is Chris Bunny. I am the deputy chief executive here at the Ministry of Social Development working in disability support services. So I've been here for about five months now. I started, kind of toward August.

I'm officially seconded. I'm not a permanent employee. And I'm here to, really guide, lead, support changes to make disability support services better for the community. I know last year was a pretty tough year for everyone in the community. A lot of anger, fear, uncertainty, not really knowing what's going to happen next.

The opportunity was made aware to me about coming in and having a go to do better, and it was one that I, you know, really, walked into. Just a quick aside, I have a son who is disabled. So I don't have a disability myself. But I do have the lived experience through him, and I've had the most wonderful support at times. And I've had the most frustrating engagement with DSS and the wider government, over the years. And it shouldn't be like that.

A lot of the things they need to be able to do better with. So this felt to me to be somewhat of a once in a lifetime opportunity. I think we have a great platform for change. And I guess, for me, in the community, I think, it really is important that we take the option that we have right now, because doing nothing is not an option.

RN: Oh, kia ora Chris. It's really nice to hear about that personal connection that you've got in your whānau to the space as well. And so, yeah, like you say, I guess in terms of the conversation we're here to have today which is around the upcoming consultation opportunity that's about to open to our communities. And, you know, you touched on it already. There will obviously be a reasonable amount of frustration and pain and mistrust present across disability communities as a result of the changes to disability support funding last year.

What is your message to folks who might be wondering whether or not they can trust this process? 

CB: Yeah. I guess, again coming onto the work myself, I am part of a community. My son actually lives in residential care. I feel part of the community that he is supported through.

I did weigh up whether or not I wanted to do this because I have to stand face to face with those people. I have to front up and see them in my personal life. And I didn't want to be that guy that came in and did nothing or made things worse. I really felt that this has to lead to something. So for the community, I would say the same message.

And I think the Government is very clear that things need to change. My first five months here in my experience with DSS previously, there's a lot of things not to like about the system. So that acceptance means that we now have a voice, a chance to put on the table those things that could make it better. The community is incredibly diverse. Every person is an individual. So it's very hard to write blanket situations from Wellington that will equally benefit every person. People live in rural centers, rural areas, metropolitan areas, they're younger, they're older. They have different types of challenges. They have different types of supports around them. And they have different aspirations and ambitions. So really important that those voices come through, the consultation and our ongoing dialogue with people in the community so that we can take account of those things and do our very best to try and support them and make things better.

RN: Awesome. It's great to hear that. So let's dive into the consultation itself. And from what I've been able to make sense of the various documents and stuff that have been shared, there are kind of two parts to the consultation. Right? The first of which is around changes to the needs assessment process or kind of allocations and assessment. Can you start by explaining a little bit more around what is the problem here that we're trying to solve and what are we hoping to achieve? 

CB: Yeah. So, not to confuse things, but the way that we've shaped the work coming on, just seeing the extent of things that I think government needs to work through to understand and hopefully improve, we've split our work into two distinct phases. The first phase is about stabilising the system.

So last year, there was a bunch of changes made. And I think even if we look prior to last year, it wasn't all rosy, in years before that. So what we really want to do is just take some of the turbulence out of the way that things are currently operating. Once we've got things a little bit more stable, we can move on to a phase that's far more fundamental in terms of looking at what DSS actually is in New Zealand and how that supports people. So the first phase is very much the stabilising.

And, there was another piece of work that we've spent quite a bit of time on in the last few months, which was the residential care pricing, which was an aspect of the system that was probably not in a state of good repair. So we needed to update the way the prices are paid and sort that out. So we've done that, or we're doing that as well.

The consultation, though, and that stabilising frame that I just mentioned that we're going out on, it's got two parts. The first part is around needs assessment and allocation processes. So it's really aimed at improving for those people that go through a NASC centre, how it reflects the diversity of disability. It looks at the role and the considerations around, family, whānau. It makes sure that assessment and supports continue to meet the needs of this disabled person. So that's you know, frequency is one aspect of it, but, there's certainly some thinking on that to be done. And, it's looking at how DSS sits in the wider system of other supports, be the Government or otherwise.

I think what's happened over the years is that it's become quite confused where to go to for what. I think it's a very hard system to navigate. That's my personal experience. And I think it shouldn't be on the person with the challenge to have to navigate the system to the extent that they’re currently required. We're trying to work out how as a system we can better support the person rather than the person having to thread their way through a very complicated area.

The other aspect that we want to engage with is around flexible funding. This was something that really, kind of exploded around March 18 changes. The world that people knew up until that point, all of a sudden changed. What we're going back to the community on is two options or two areas that we just want thoughts on and test our thinking and hopefully, point us in the right direction. 

One option is to do better under the current approach. If we were to try and write rules and guidelines around the way flexible funding works, how should we do that in a better way? As I said earlier, people are individuals, and it's very hard to write blanket rules that equally apply to people in an individual circumstance. But, you know, really interested to explore that and if we can do better if that if that area has merit, then, you know, we'll roll up our sleeves and, and get onto that.

The other option though is, quite a departure from that approach. It's really orientating, around the goal of the person. So through the needs assessment, what are we supporting the person for? It was, you know, no end of things that could be identified there. Security, dignity, social inclusion, education, employment, you know, it goes on and on. Once we've got that goal set in, the individualised funding is allocated or made available, then enabling the person to be more determinative of how they use that funding in relation to the goal. And the goal becomes the reference. So we come back and we understand how progress is being made to the goal or whether or not the goal level needs to be changed. But quite a different approach and, really looking forward to a discussion with the community on thoughts around that, how could that work. Yeah, very much, something that we want to explore. 

RN: I wanna come back to the flexible funding kind of conversation in a second. But just to move back to the needs assessment and allocation process just for a moment. Some of the documents you've shared detail why that process is not necessarily equitable or consistent around the country. I mean, can you go into a little bit more detail around the kind of the challenges or problems that you're trying to address with any changes to the needs assessment process and I'm sure you'll understand as a whānau member of someone with a disability how challenging those assessments can be. We in the community talk about having to often talk about your ‘worst day’, you know, and the kind of indignity that requires of folks. It does feel like it would be nice if we didn't have to take those steps. But what are the changes that you're looking to explore in the needs assessment space?

CB: So it's just like that. You know, in many regards, the needs assessment can be quite a degrading or deficit based conversation. How can we flip it so it's actually more aspirational? What are we actually trying to do here? Through the support, what are we aiming to achieve?

The machinery that would sit behind it, it is a new assessment tool. It is NASCs working consistently differently, through the country. But it is fundamentally a change in the way that we do it. Again, my personal experience with our assessment back in the day, not one of my favourite periods of my life. The assessment didn't really pay much regard to our family. So I have two other children, and those children, inevitably, would be affected by what's happening with their brother.

That is a principle, consideration. The well-being of the wider family, the ability for the wider family to continue to support. And those are the things that I think are well worth discussing and understanding from different perspectives other than my own limited individual experience. We do have and I'm sure we might touch on this later as well, you know, we've got the Enabling Good Live sites as well, and they take a different approach.

And, we have an absolute difference of support through Enabling Good Lives, compared to support through NASC. And there's some great things in enabling their lives that we should absolutely learn from. And if we can make that consistent through the country, then that's the thing that we really need to hone in on and understand the implications of them and take it from there.

Final comment on the needs assessment for me is that circumstances change. You know, if I think again, over the last nineteen years of my son's life, what was really important to us when he was three was quite different when he was five, six, six and a half, 12. All kinds of things come up, you know, which is that is being human and how the needs assessment and how the support can just be a little bit more nimble and adaptive to those changing circumstances. That's very much what we want to get into, through the needs assessment. At the moment, we're told in some cases, the reassessments are too frequent. You know, the change isn't that significant and it's just another task that a person has to go through. We also hear the opposite, that the assessment and the supports don't keep at pace with changing needs. So these are the things that we absolutely want to hear different voices on. 

RN: Cool. Thanks for that. So on to the flexible funding conversation. Now I'm sure there'll be many people watching this and many people who engage in the consultation who will simply ask ‘why can't we just go back to the way things were?’ For many folks, and certainly you will have heard this, things were working, maybe not perfectly, but certainly better than perhaps they ever have before. So what's your response to that kind of request to simply wind it back to pre-March 18, 24?

CB: Yeah. I I think at a kind of high level, I would say, yep, things were certainly better for some people with the pre-March settings. But it wasn't as I said earlier, it wasn't all rosy, and it certainly wasn't fair or equitable across the motu.

So we're taking this opportunity to explore two broad options. And I guess the second option which I outlined, which is more goal-orientated and more flexibility to determine. That's probably more akin to what the settings were back in March, for some. But we need to understand that. And, so instead of just having an option to roll back March, that would have, certainly been well received by some, but it wouldn't have made that much difference to others.

So we really want to work for the whole population and understand how a setting could be made that gives affect to that. 

RN: One of the inequities around this that we've observed in our work is that often, you know, the system is designed to enable the greatest access to resources for those who can best navigate the systems. Right? So those folks who understand how systems and processes work and can, you know, talk about things in the right way and use the "right language", often end up getting access to greater support than folks who might not understand how to navigate those systems. And you know this is far from unique to DSS. So I'm wondering whether that's part of the goal here as well in terms of making sure that you know certainly when I've gone to to places outside the big cities the access to services is less equitable than folks who might live in those main urban centres and who might have lots of experience navigating lots of different government systems. So yeah I mean is that part of the goal here too is around making sure that folks who might not even understand or know what their access to to support or resources might be actually get greater slice of the pie? 

CB: Yeah. I think, kind of two responses to that. The first is, those rural areas, it's a great example you put up Red. Often, you don't have services because you don't have funding, and you don't have funding because you don't have services. So it is a little bit ‘chicken and egg’ and that is not equitable. So we need to work through how we can ensure that there are services in areas, that if we just use historical funding as the formula, nothing changes. So there's certainly something in that that we want to  tease through.

The other point that you made really well is that some people are better able to navigate the system. There is better support around them, there's better understanding of the challenges or the condition. We have absolutely done our best to try and access those voices that we know don't come through quite as strongly as others. So that's not to say that we don't wanna hear from people who, you know, we've heard from in the past. That's not the case at all. But we know that we don't have strong, Māori, Pacific, often intellectual disability voices towards the back of the room. So we want to bring this through. So we've been working with different segments of the community to try and connect to those people. 

I also appreciate that trust in government can be a factor for many of these communities, either through the disability experience or through different cultural experiences or different backgrounds. So there's a few things we need to overcome in that regard, but we're just absolutely encouraging people  to have your say. You know, we really want to hear what it means to be living in rural, to be older or younger, etcetera, etcetera, we need to know. Otherwise, we're just guessing and guessing is not good enough. 

RN: It's great to hear. So I guess just finally, stepping back and evaluating where all of this is heading, I think there's a general sense amongst the community that this is kind of a further step away from perhaps the world that perhaps people were becoming accustomed to over the last couple of years. You know, there was a real sense of hope, I suppose, around the establishment of Whaikaka, our very own ministry, sort of talk about access legislation in the past.

And so I guess I'm interested in your kind of personal vision around where we're heading, you know. I think about you talked right at the start of this around the the difficulty of disabled people and the whānau navigating different government agencies, trying to find support for ‘X’ through this agency, trying to find support for ‘Y’ through a different agency and, you know, there was something in this kind of the flexibility of DSS that was like, ‘oh, phew, finally we don't have to navigate, you know, a hundred different government departments to get the support that we need’. So what's the vision we're working towards here? Is EGL, you know, the ultimate goal of self determination and agency and choice and control? I mean is that still something that you and the team feel something we're all working towards here?

CB: Yeah. So the Government and the minister has been very clear that EGL principles are right at the centre of any future system, any changes that we make to the system. And when you look at the principles, they're undeniable. You know, I love picking holes and things, but I look at those and just go, those are the things that I want the system to wrap around. I think we've seen it's tough to navigate government.

The support's beyond government, let's not forget about those because those are very, very important people's lives, but for the bit that I am a part of the Government bit, it is not easy. And we see this kind of phenomena of government from time to time that if one agency steps up, others take a backwards step. So I look around some of the things that have been provided through DSS and they are services that other agencies have been funded for and are responsible for providing. So government needs to lift its game. 

On the Whaikaha point, I remain a huge supporter, and I really hope they can make the difference that I think is within their mandate. They, I hope, become the part of the system that holds government to account, government agencies to account. So DSS is just one provider of support. As is education, as is health, ACC or Oranga Tamariki. You know, there are so many agencies have a role in this one. I would like somebody to tell me, push me into doing what is my responsibility. Take the pressure away from the individual because this is the Government. We get paid to do this stuff. It is our job. The person who's accessing this doesn't get paid, so we need to do better. So Whaikaha, absolutely, I think is a really important aspect of the system.

I think, my view on this one, in the short period of being around the couple of years, they were asked to do two pretty big things. One is the population of New Zealand that has disability, the one point one million or more, there is something that needs to be thought about pretty intensely in of itself. The other thing they were challenged with was disability support services. And, as per the discussion that we've had today, there is a lot of things that need to change in the way that that system needs to operate for it to be modern and to provide the assurance and security that the community absolutely deserves and is entitled to.

So those are two hefty tasks. I think by the disability support services coming into MSD, that allows us to really throw heft into that side of it, but frees up Whaikaha to do the population considerations. But also looking across government and holding us to task. So I actually feel quite encouraged. I know, that view is not shared by many in the community, but my belief in, again, coming into the role, I came in because I thought, things need to be better and they can be better. If either of those things wasn't true, I wouldn't have come. 

RN: Yeah. Good on you. I mean, we're all we're all kind of trying to row in the same direction to get the supports and the wind beneath our sails that we need to to live the lives that we dream of. Hey so tell us, folks who are listening to this and are like ‘all right then, I believe you Chris, I believe you DSS, we're in this, let's go and have a kōrero,’ how can people get involved in the consultation? 

CB: I should have said earlier, thank you to those that completed the survey late last year. We put out a survey. About 1550 people responded to the survey. The team has been working through all the submissions, and we'll actually publish the results of that on our website shortly. And the reason for saying that is, I know that many in the community say ‘we've said this before, why should we do it again?’ Two things. We are absolutely drawing on what we've heard previously, but we do wanna test that with circumstances of today as well. So that's the reason we're going out large. 

In terms of how to get involved, we are doing quite a large series of workshops through the country. So we go as far north as Whangarei, and we go as far south as Invercargill in many locations in between. The consultation runs from the 10th of February, through until the 24th of March. So there's about a six week period to get involved. 

We have online sessions. So if people, unable or don't want to go to the sessions that we have in those locations, then they can jump online and be part of a workshop online. We have DIY packs. So if you're part of a community that wants to do your own thing and doesn't want people like me in the room, we have a facilitation pack that can be made available. You can do it like that. You can make a submission, a written submission, a video submission. We have particular focus workshops for some parts of the community. So we have focuses on carers, focuses on autism. Because when you think about, not to generalise, but some of the characteristics of autism, a group setting might be somewhat intimidating.

So we wanna make it safe and want to make sure that they feel able to speak up and we can hear them. You know, we've got a bunch of ideas on there, and, you know, the idea is that we get as many voices as we possibly can through. So, hopefully, there's something in there that we saw for anyone who wants to get involved.

RN: Really appreciate the breadth of opportunity there and particularly the DIY facilitation pack. I think it's a nice thought to consider how communities can and, as you've mentioned, the many layers to our communities that might want to have a conversation amongst themselves without that power dynamic of having government in the room. So just wanna acknowledge that as well. 

Well, thanks so much for your time, Chris. We really appreciate the kind of personal experiences you've shared, the goals and aspirations you and the DSS team are working towards. And we wish you all the best for the consultation period.

CB: Thank you, Red. Really appreciate it. I should have mentioned I'm actually on the road through the consultation period as well. So any of your viewers that see this, please come and say hi. Speak your truth. You might think I might not wanna hear it, but I need to know it. So, let us know your thoughts. Really appreciate it. 

RN: Thanks, Chris.

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