Community Service - Assignment Solution

Welfare Law: The Disabled

Disability Support Pension (DSP) is the compensation for individuals that are of working age with a disability or injury for an extended period that restricts them from working for a full-time job. To receive the Disability Support Pension:

• The participant should be over 15 years of age, 
• The participant should be 20 percent mentally or physically disabled to receive payment, and 
• The participant should only be able to work for a maximum of 30 hours a week to receive payments for the next two years. (Department of Social Security 1992 as cited in Cai & Gregory, 2005). 

Those individuals who are blind automatically qualify for the DSP payment. Moreover, the recent criteria to be eligible for the payments were introduced in 1991 along with Disability Reform Package. (Cai & Gregory, 2005). From this research paper we sense that till 2005 there weren’t any changes in the policy, reforms in the policy were introduced in 2006 which would be explained further in the essay.

According to the Parliament of Australia (2018), From 20th September 2017, the rate of a single participant was 814 dollars whereas that of a couple was 1,227.20 dollars 

Argyrous and Neale (2003) in their research investigated the association between the workforce and the rise in the number of DSP participants. They reported that there was a huge decrease in the number of males working in the workforce from the early 1970s due to a high rise in the DSP participants and any that any incentive offered to them would eventually fail unless the situation of labour market doesn’t improve (as cited in Morris, 2006).

Cai and Gregory (2005) also focus on the relationship between unemployment and disability. They stated that before transferring to the DSP, many participants had been getting unemployment advantages. The main variable is the period of their unemployment which is that the longer an individual is not working, higher the chances that they will now transfer to Disability Support Pension; from 1997 to 2002, ‘more than 40 percent of the individuals moved to DSP benefits from unemployment (Cai & Gregory, 2005).

Sirvastava & Chamberlain (2005) conducted a study in Britain which reported inequality due to many reasons. The disability services institution in Britain explained that restrictions such as lack of knowledge about disability, no acceptance, lack of access and people with disabilities were restricted in finding employment according to their interests. Eradicating restrictions on disabled individuals will help in return for them to find work. This case study was on the bases of only 24 study responses from vocational restoration service workers that were not presenting the citizens of the country, however, the research offers hints as to some of the limitation to work (as cited in Hutton, Bohle, and Mc Namara, 2012)