When Priscilla Haley decided to move to Darwin, she took a big risk. She fought for appropriate care for her daughter, Stephanie, who has since been hospitalized as an inpatient in nine different hospitals. The decision was therefore influenced by the specialized physiotherapy that Stephanie needs in order to move through her day-to-day life. After years of intense therapy, including hydrotherapy, at six years old, Stephanie is independent in her mobility. She is now moving with a walking frame and even learned how to ride a firefly scooter! Recent arts funding cuts jeopardize the sustenance for the services that have allowed her to flourish.
Under the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS), physiotherapy funding was slashed in half. This decision has a huge impact across the country, not least in the Northern Territory. Providers in NT, WA, SA, and Tas will hypothetically see $40 per hour cut. In other jurisdictions the minimum drop is $10/hr. Many parents and healthcare professionals fear these changes will lead to reduced access to essential therapies for children with disabilities, such as Stephanie.
Impact on Families Seeking Support
For Priscilla Haley, the path to Darwin started from her desire to create the best life possible for her daughter. She explained, “I made the decision to move Stephanie to a capital city—I’m a single mom and wanted her to have the best life that I could provide. Faced with dramatic state funding cuts, she worries that all her hard work will have been for naught.
She expressed frustration about the implications of the changes: “I may as well have not done the big move and continued services on telehealth.” The cuts will limit travel allowances for physiotherapists visiting clients in their homes. This new restriction presents a huge barrier in the outback Northern Territory, where travel can be arduous and complicated.
The emotional toll on families is significant. Parents like Priscilla Haley worry that reduced funding will force children like Stephanie to share in-clinic sessions with other patients, limiting their individual care and progress.
Challenges Faced by Service Providers
Emily Jordan operates a mobile physiotherapy practice that serves over 500 clients. Of those, 400 get care beyond the clinic walls. She focused on the distinctive challenges that distance and travel pose in the Northern Territory. She told us that for many people in the NT, travel is not a luxury. Instead, it’s an after-school challenge that calls for weeks of planning, multiple stakeholders and regular communication.
With cuts of some form on the horizon, it will become financially unviable for a large number of those physiotherapists to keep providing services to these remote communities. Heather Malcolm, a representative from the Center for Independent Living, issued a dire warning. She thinks that these amendments will place unprecedented strain on state and territory healthcare ecosystems. She explained that this is really just a cost shift from the NDIA. Consequently, the effect will eventually land squarely in the NT health system’s lap.
Malcolm anticipates that families will face increased pressure as they struggle to access necessary care. “Medium to long-term, people are going to have more issues that mean they need to present to the emergency department and their care has gone from disability care to needing support within the health system.”
Personal Stories Highlighting the Need for Care
Maddy Evans is another parent whose child has been impacted by these funding cuts. Her son Oscar has PTEN hamartoma tumour syndrome, an extremely rare genetic disorder that affects his brain development. Maddy, Oscar’s mother, recounts how crucial physiotherapy has been in getting Oscar back and moving to recover from extreme speech and cognitive deficits. He’s further developed those skills through other therapists. There’s no doubt that physiotherapy has played an enormous role in his progress. To that end, she continued.
Maddy is concerned about how shared sessions could affect Oscar’s progress: “They’ve tried to bring other children in, in the past — he will panic and just try to leave the space.” The prospect of sharing in-clinic sessions raises worries about Oscar’s ability to thrive in an environment that should cater specifically to his needs.
In more than just physical progress Maddy explained that in recent years physiotherapy has got Oscar working on the fundamentals of play. She reported that, over the years, he has learned more and more typical play skills and engages with his peers. He did that through daily sessions with a physiotherapist. Maddy is concerned that funding cuts will drive physiotherapists out of the territory. If that goes through, Oscar might be cut off from this crucial support for development.
The emotional investment families and service providers have made in these reforms cannot be overstated. As Priscilla Haley observed about Stephanie’s progress: “She’s learning to walk beautifully in that walking frame … to push herself around in the firefly scooter.” Such milestones are a reminder of how important ongoing physiotherapy is for children like Stephanie and Oscar.
