Roshan Desumbuk-AY loves gardening and selling his produce to his local community.
Last year, he grew and sold 26 kilograms of chillies. This season, he is growing even more vegetables — corn, potato, chilli, pumpkin, coriander and beans.
Mr Desumbuk-AY, who is Bhutanese, resettled in Tasmania in March 2011 and has been receiving support through Migrant Resource Centre North in Launceston ever since.
When he first migrated, the centre's help was mainly around resettlement, now it is helping him access the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS).
Mr Desumbuk-AY has an intellectual disability and struggles with his memory.
Dilip Pradhan, who is also a migrant from Bhutan, is his support worker and is helping him navigate the NDIS system.
"I know a lot of issues in my community and I'm working as a base to connect people," Mr Pradhan said.
Mr Pradhan is also helping Mr Desumbuk-AY turn his love of gardening into a business to earn money.
He said a big issue for Bhutanese migrants is not knowing they have a disability or that government support is available.
People with NDIS plans not utilising them
Nationally, only around 10 per cent of NDIS participants identify as being from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds (CALD).
Although that number is rising, it is still well down on a previous goal of 20 per cent of NDIS participants being from CALD backgrounds by 2019.
Mark Deverell was employed by the Migrant Resource Centre North in 2020 to help it expand into the disability space and break down some of the barriers migrants were having trying to access the scheme.
"It was a way for us to actually acknowledge that there's large representation of CALD people living with a disability," Mr Deverell said.
"What we found, and particularly when I started working with the organisation, was there was under-utilisation of plans, so people who had NDIS plans were not actually utilising them."
The Disability Royal Commission last year heard many migrants had trouble navigating and accessing the scheme due to cultural barriers or "stigma and shame".
Mr Deverell said the centre had identified themes of migrants not understanding the scheme or not having it communicated to them properly.
The centre launched Welcome Disability Service last November as a way to help the large number of its migrants who are living with a disability access and understand the scheme.
It is now helping 54 migrants access the NDIS.
"It's often very difficult for people from CALD communities to know where to engage and how to engage with other services, so providing Welcome Disability Service gave them a sense of belonging and a place that they are actually familiar with to go and receive those services," Mr Deverell said.
"By us creating Welcome Disability Service we've now got people up between 90 and 100 per cent utilisation of their plans."
Mr Deverell said the NDIS support the centre provided was not only translation and access support, it was also more personal.
"The types of support that we deliver are more about building people's capacity, building functional skills for people to be able to integrate better, to have health community and social lives and to gain skills that will lead to further training and employment," he said.
Hopes new strategy will solve access barriers
It is hoped work like that being done by Launceston's Migrant Resource Centre will be a solution to NDIS access barriers for migrants living with a disability.
The National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIA) is in the middle of developing a Cultural and Linguistic Diversity Strategy 2023-2027 to help lift CALD participation rates and break access barriers.
A NDIA spokesperson said people from the CALD community were helping develop that plan.
"Significant work has already been undertaken to understand how the NDIS can better meet the needs of CALD participants and engage with CALD communities," the spokesperson said.
"The first phase of work involved better understanding the challenges faced by people from CALD backgrounds when accessing and using the NDIS.
"We are now working closely with participants from CALD backgrounds and the community to identify solutions and actions to make access and navigation of the scheme easier for people from CALD backgrounds, and to make culturally and linguistically appropriate NDIS services more available."
