Submission on the further improvements to Disability Support Services

Rare Disorders NZ considers this consultation and the decisions that follow it a critical test of the Ministry of Social Development’s commitment to acting on CO54(c) and to the UNCRPD. To give meaningful effect to this recommendation, the Ministry should ensure that DSS assessment processes, service design, and service eligibility and accessibility are based on a person's needs, circumstances, and the impact of their condition on daily life, rather than on diagnostic labels or artificial distinctions between "health" and "disability".

Failure to address these barriers risks perpetuating the exclusion that the UNCRPD Committee specifically sought to remedy. People with rare disorders should not be denied equitable access to DSS because their conditions are rare, fluctuating, difficult to diagnose, poorly understood, require different services or care solutions to more common conditions, or span both health and disability systems.

Read the full submission here.