OHA Community feedback on NDIS Supports:
Key messages
Supports are currently provided by a broad range of outdoor health practitioners to a diverse range of NDIS participants under a range of Core and Capacity Building categories.
We note that ‘Wilderness therapy’ has been listed by the NDIS as ‘not value for money/not effective or beneficial’, with no further detail available about what informs this opinion. We request that ‘Wilderness therapy’ be removed from the “excluded” list for the following reasons:
- Given the general lack of understanding within the NDIS service system about evidence-informed outdoor health practices, we have concerns that if ‘wilderness therapy’ is included in the list of non-approved treatments, there is a very real risk that NDIS planners and referrers will accidentally conflate terminology and exclude NDIS participants from accessing the existing suite of evidence-informed, value-for money outdoor health, wellbeing and therapy practices.
- Excluding ‘wilderness therapy’ may accidentally remove access to 30+ forms of evidence-informed outdoor practices that are currently being provided in Australia by wide ranging therapists and practitioners to NDIS participants.
- Listing ‘wilderness therapy’ as excluded ignores a large body of research evidence AND may inadvertently also limit innovative trauma-informed supports provided outdoors, with effective wide-reaching outcomes for diverse peoples.
Based on stakeholder feedback and research evidence, OHA requests that evidence-informed and value-for-money outdoor health, wellbeing and therapy practices be explicitly included in the NDIS list of eligible supports.
OHA does not support involuntary coercive forms of therapy of any kind. We do not endorse unethical non-evidence-based involuntary ‘Wilderness boot camps’ that are designed to be coercive, and as a result harm participants and staff. The OHA list of Ethical Principles and Practice Standards support safe quality outdoor health practices being offered around Australia.