The Government Budget for 2017/18 is out. Our National Policy Coordinator Sam Murray breaks down what the planned spending means for the disability sector.
Ministry of Health’s disability support services.
The Ministry of Health actually spent $1,183 million on disability support services in 2016/17. As usual, this is more than the Government planned to spend (the Government planned to spend $1,165 million). The overspending is across residential, community, and environment (equipment and home modifications etc.) services (as well as funded family care).
For 2017/18, the Government plans to spend $1,208 million on the Ministry of Health’s disability support services. The increased funding will be due to a mixture of increased demand for services, the system transformation project and the pay equity settlement.
There are a number of new performance measures for disability support services in this budget including:
- 10% of people using disability support services will be under a self-directed funding arrangement (this includes Choice in Community Living arrangements).
- 77% of people using disability support services will be using community support services (this target is to be reached by moving people from residential services to community services, as an organisation we are focused on enabling and supporting this).
So the government wants more people to use community support services (rather than residential) and self-directed funding arrangements.
The pattern for the last couple of years has been for the Ministry of Health to overspend their budget on disability support services so do not be surprised if actual spending is higher than $1,208 million.
Vote Social Development (which includes Work & Income New Zealand).
Promoting Positive Outcomes for Disabled People
This budget covers the Office for Disability Issues and various, but dwindling, initiatives. Funding for this budget will fall by $329,000 to $3.7 million (funding fell last Budget too). Although there appears to be new funding for Be Accessible to deliver an accessible tourism programme, this funding is actually a transfer from another part of the budget.
Community Participation Services (vocational services)
Funding for community participation services will decrease to $81.2 million, down from $82.6 million. This decrease is due to a one-off transfer of $3.2 million from the Ministry of Health expiring (this transfer was for Enabling Good Lives Waikato). This decrease is offset by $1.8 million in extra funding. So if we ignore the temporary transfer for Enabling Good Lives Waikato, funding for vocational services will increase from $79.4 million to $81.2 million (this seems a bit low to cover the pay equity settlement).
Disability Assistance
This budget covers the Disability Allowance and the Child Disability Allowance.
The government expects spending on the Child Disability Allowance to steadily increase from $88.3 million in 2016/17 to 99 million in 2020/21. This expected increase is due to the Government expecting more children to qualify. So they are expecting an increase in the number of disabled children.
The government expects spending on the Disability Allowance to slightly decrease from $288.8 million in 2016/17 to $284.2 million in 2020/21. This expected decrease is due to the Government expecting fewer people to qualify. This seems odd with the aging population.
Supported Living Payment
The government expects spending on the Supported Living Payment to steadily increase from $1,529.5 million in 2016/17 to $1,571.4 million in 2020/21. This increase is due to inflation adjustments. The Government is also expecting, however, that the number of people on the Supported Living Payment will decrease from 97,200 people in 2016/17 to 96,000 people in 2020/21.
Education
Just like with the Ministry of Health’s disability support services, it appears the Government spent more than it planned too. The Ministry of Education spent $670.6 million on learning support (the Government planned to spend $657.9 million). For 2017/18, the Government plans to spend $676.7 million on learning support.*
The Government has established a number of new performance measures for this spending, this includes:
- 90% of parents receiving specialist services believe their child is made to feel welcome at their current school/early learning service.
- At least 24.7% of school leavers who used the Ongoing Resourcing Scheme qualify with NCEA level 1 and at least 15.6% qualify with NCEA level 2 (if this is the target, the current statistics should be lower).
The number of children receiving a specialist learning support service greatly exceeded forecasts for 2016/17 (the Government expected between 27,345 - 33,425 children, the estimated actual number was 34,000 - 35,000). The Government expects between 29,285 - 35,365 children to receive a service in 2017/18.
In terms of new spending for 2017/18 there is:
- Half a million for meeting increased costs in learning support and another half a million for increasing operational funding to schools (so around $1 million in total).
- $4.5 million for more in-class support (funding for teacher aides). I included a planned increase in funding from last budget in this amount.
- $1 million in planned increases to the Ongoing Resourcing Scheme.
*I calculate this by combining two different budgets; learning support and interventions for target student groups. There may be a small amount of support included that is not strictly disability-related (such as $16 million for ECE participation initiatives for Māori and Pasifika children). The Government says total spending on learning support is $633 million (I cannot see how they calculate this from the publicly available data).
