Thoughts
They Approved My Wheelchair. Nobody Delivered It.
· Madeleine Nicholas
I’ve learned that lesson the hard way more than once.
Somewhere between being told “it’s approved” and it actually arriving at my front door, there’s a gap that nobody seems responsible for.
The paperwork says approved.
The system says funded.
But you’re still waiting.
For equipment.
For supports.
For the thing you were told you already had.
Approval doesn’t help if you’re still left without what you need.
Approval isn’t the same as having the thing. I’ve learned that the hard way more than once. Something gets signed off, everyone moves on to the next case, and somewhere between the approval and my front door there’s a gap that nobody actually owns.
Assessment, funding, and delivery all sit with different teams, and each one considers their job done the second they hand it off to the next. Nobody’s tracking the whole journey from where I’m sitting. So the wheelchair sits in a warehouse, or the order gets lost between two systems that don’t talk to each other, and I’m the one stuck without it. Sometimes for months.
This is one of the clearest examples I’ve seen of a system built around departments instead of people. Every individual step can get ticked off correctly, and the actual outcome, a person having the equipment they need, still doesn’t happen. Because nobody’s job was to watch it through to the end.
Approval should mean something’s actually coming. Too often it just means someone else’s part of the paperwork is finished.
Have you ever had something “approved” that still took forever, or never turned up at all?
If you’re tired of chasing approvals into a void, that’s exactly the kind of gap the Self Advocacy Collection is built to help you close, coming soon. Link in bio, lighteningup.com.au.
Madeleine x