Why are mobility vehicles so out of reach for disabled people?

The Cox family are stuck. The last time they were able to travel as a family it cost them $400 to hire a mobility van for the weekend. 

“We're pretty much not going anywhere until we somehow get a van,” Rosemary Cox said. 

Her 5-year-old daughter Patricia uses a wheelchair to get around. While her dad Andrew can still carry her, Cox isn’t able to anymore. 

The $12,165 grant from Whaikaha - the Ministry of Disabled People is “nowhere near enough” to fund a mobility van, Cox said. 

They really need a new vehicle with a long life ahead of it but that would cost $70,000 based on their research. 

However, even with the contribution from Whaikaha, they could probably only afford to purchase a van costing $40k and that would be at least 10 years old.

So they’ve turned to the Lottery Individuals with Disabilities Fund, the only other official way that disabled people and whānau can apply for vehicle funding. 

They first applied for a Lottery grant in October 2022, but were turned down because they were told there wasn’t enough funding that round. They applied again in April 2023 but won’t hear the committee’s decision until September.

It’s “really frustrating” to wait so long, Cox said. Even if they are successful in September they probably won’t get a van until next year.

Out of the hundreds of Lottery applications for mobility vehicles, only 59% were successful in the past five years. 

Between July 1, 2018 and June 30, 2022, there were 776 applications for modified vehicles through the Lottery Individuals with Disabilities Fund and 459 were fully or partially granted. 

For the Cox whānau, getting a mobility van would mean “we'd be able to go out for a day as a family,” she said. “We could go on holidays.”

“I could take Patricia to the library, take her out in the local community just after school, take her out for an hour and then be able to pop back home and say I needed to change her or something,” Cox said.

Government’s policy last reviewed 13 years ago

The Government’s vehicle grant policy was last reviewed in 2010, and the Minister for Disability Issues Priyanca Radhakrishnan acknowledged that was a long time ago.

“Many policies that are relevant to disabled people have not been reviewed in some time,” she said.

Radhakrishnan expects the vehicle modification funding policies will be reviewed by Whaikaha over time which has an “important job ahead to review existing policies to see what needs to be updated to better support disabled people”, she said. 

Whaikaha’s deputy chief executive operational design and delivery, Amanda Bleckmann said the $12,165 grant was a “a onetime contribution”. 

When asked further why the vehicle grant was a onetime contribution, but other equipment - such as wheelchairs - was not a onetime contribution, she said disabled people could actually make further applications for vehicle funding after six years.

“Additional requests for funding vehicle modifications will generally only be considered after a period of six years in cases if the person’s disability-related needs have changed resulting in the need for different modifications to their vehicle.” 

Bleckmann said individualised funding couldn’t be used to work around the limits currently set by Cabinet for vehicle modifications. 

“The expectation is that people would work through the vehicle modifications service first,” she said. “It is important that appropriate expert advice is received to ensure that any modification will be effective and not harmful long term.”

Bleckmann also encouraged disabled people to seek additional funding through the Lottery Grants Board.

A Department of Internal Affairs spokesperson said the Lottery Individuals with Disabilities Fund “reduces barriers that restrict life choices for disabled people and their families”. 

They said a person might be unsuccessful in their application because the request could be funded elsewhere, or the amount requested isn’t cost-effective.

“Grants made for vehicles seek to fund the most cost-effective vehicle that will meet their disability needs as this approach allows for the maximum amount of people to be funded. Requested amounts are often adjusted upwards to ensure funding will reasonably meet the market price for the mobility equipment required,” the spokesperson said. 

They said most vehicle grants were subject to an occupational therapist assessment who has to confirm the long-term suitability and cost-effectiveness of the vehicle. 

External factors, such as the Covid-19 pandemic, significantly impacted both the prices and supply chains of vehicles, the spokesperson said.

Why are mobility vans so expensive? 

One of the key players in the mobility vehicle industry in Aotearoa is Milner Mobility. 

General Manager Darren Milner said mobility vehicles are expensive because there’s a small supply.

“Scarcity is probably its main one,” Milner said. “They're all small run vehicles and they're all very bespoke.”

He said freight was 400% more expensive than it was pre-Covid, and because all the equipment is built overseas, everything needs to be imported. 

“Everyone's a little bit different, everything needs to be done on a per-client basis,” Milner said. “It just makes them naturally expensive.”

And the “two distinct forms of funding” make it inequitable for disabled people to access vehicles. 

“ACC has more funding availability per client so essentially the outcomes are different for an ACC client to a non-ACC client just because of the funding availability difference.”

“A lot of the funding, if you're not on ACC, comes down to grants or some sort of other charitable organisation, rather than a direct government funder and the Ministry of Health funding is really, really short on what's required.”

“It hasn't changed for a long long time,” he said. 

He said his team helps with people’s applications, with proofreading and also making people aware what funding is actually available.

People have come to them saying they are going to put on a second mortgage, “but we try and discourage it”, he said. 

“Sometimes there's a time lag there, it can take up to six months to get the funding sorted, and sometimes those six months are precious. That's always hard.”

Despite that, he said modern technology has the potential to make accessing vehicles more accessible in the future.

“For mobility, I can see driverless cars being a huge asset,” he said.

Getting the grant 

Liam Sanders has come out on the other side of applying for a modified vehicle and is now zooming around Auckland in his VW Caddy which he drives from his wheelchair.

His vehicle cost $55,000 in total and was imported from the UK in 2018.

It was funded through a combination of what Sanders calls “limited funding” from the Ministry of Health, his own money and a $27,995 Lottery Grant. 

He said he did his due diligence and research to find the right vehicle because “as a wheelchair user it greatly increases your independence”. 

He said he based his application around needing a vehicle for his fulltime job, but acknowledged that people need a vehicle for other reasons too.

“I think it's really about pulling parts of your life together and what you do out in the community, and whether it is or isn't full-time work, and how you frame it up in your application,” he said.

“The wording's really important around showing the value that having a functional, adapted vehicle is to what you do.”

For many disabled people in full-time work, who don’t qualify for a Community Services Card, the total funding they can access is $12,165, according to the Ministry of Health Vehicle Purchase and Modifications guidelines.

Here’s his advice on applying for funding for a modified vehicle or car adaptions: 

Connect with other people in the community

Get advice from other disabled people in terms of what funding avenues there are and how they wrote their applications for funding grants.

Just start!

Before you even write the application, start jotting down some notes on what to include in your application. Think about what you do day-to-day and specific activities where a vehicle will make a big and positive difference in your life.

Keep trying

It is a pretty hard application process to go through and navigate. But if you’re not successful, try again! Learn from other disabled people on what made their applications successful and adapt your’s and apply again.