Citizens or consumers? Seeking personhood through ‘personalised’ care in the National Disability Insurance Scheme

Abstract

AbstractNational Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) funding rules determine who can access which supports. However, what is less frequently acknowledged, is that those rules produce an assumed model of personhood. Arguably, this becomes most evident when a case for funding reaches the Administrative Appeals Tribunal, where disputes are resolved between the administrators of the scheme (NDIA) and NDIS participants. In 2019, one such significant and controversial case asserted that ‘WRMF’, a woman living with multiple sclerosis, could use her NDIS funding to pay for the services of a sexual therapist. The basis for this ruling involved complex debates about citizenship and rights, which were embedded in contested notions of the person. In this paper, I use critical discourse analysis to examine these competing claims and the individualised framework in which WRMF's case was debated. The analysis reveals two key social justice issues: first, that there are limits to the citizenship available for people living with a disability (which assumes compulsory able‐bodiedness); second, that broader concepts of the person require explicit attention from the NDIS to embrace more expansive notions of citizenship for people living with a disability, including acknowledgement of sexual identities and needs.