Autistic Aussie reveals the huge problem with the NDIS – despite it paying for his laundry and washing his dishes

A disabled writer has complained that he cannot buy a dishwasher or dryer with his NDIS funding, but will have a support worker sent around to help with the dishes and washing his clothes.

Sebastian West – who goes by ‘Fern’ or ‘Lars’ on social media, uses the pronouns ‘she/he’ and describes himself as ‘disabled and mentally ill’ – shared a three-minute rant about his NDIS funding in April.

“The NDIS is so happy to pay hundreds, four, five, six hundred dollars a week so that you can get a support worker to help you with the dishes and laundry and all that,” Mr West told his 40,000 TikTok followers.

‘But they won’t finance a dryer or dishwasher which is cheaper in the long run and also promotes the participant’s independence because they don’t have to rely on support staff to come to their home and help them with the dishes – they just have a dishwasher that they can stack themselves.’

The 26-year-old, who lives in a three-bedroom house in Albion in Melbourne’s west, said a dishwasher and tumble dryer would allow him to be more independent and would be cheaper for the NDIS in the long run.

“If rich people with money can buy a dryer to make things easier for them, I should be able to buy a dryer with my NDIS funding because I’m disabled,” he added.

“I shouldn’t have to have counselors come to my home multiple times a week just to help me with the basic things that I could just buy a device for.”

The video, which has been viewed more than 84,000 times, left many viewers confused as to why Mr West needed help from a support worker when he could independently stack a dishwasher and load a washing machine.

“I’m confused,” one wrote.

‘Why is washing dishes more challenging than stacking a dishwasher?’

Another person asked what the problem was with simply washing dishes by hand.

“It has many facets,” Mr. West responded.

‘I struggle to control it due to my mental health and I have joint problems with my fingers and the wet surfaces and heavy objects cause me to drop them often.’

Mr West, who said in another response that he was ‘literally so grateful’ for the NDIS, appeared to suggest he had bought a dishwasher and dryer with his own money.

“My NDIS didn’t pay for my dryer or my dishwasher, but it’s the two appliances in my house that make me independent,” he said in the video.

‘If I didn’t have a dishwasher, I wouldn’t be able to wash dishes. If I didn’t have a dryer, I wouldn’t have clean clothes.”

One commenter, claiming to be a support worker, suggested a way around this problem.

“Put in your plan goals that you want to learn to do laundry independently, then you can get around it,” they said.

The NDIS referred Daily Mail Australia to a section on its website titled ‘household items’.

“We don’t normally fund common household items such as a dishwasher or washing machine as these are unlikely to meet our funding criteria for support,” he says. states.

The NDIS said this is because it was not disability-related support and it was ‘reasonable to expect you to fund the cost of common household items in the home’.

Mr. West describes himself as “autigender,” which is defined online as an identity in which someone feels their gender is linked to their autism.

“It’s not that autism is a gender, but that your autism affects the way you perceive gender and your gender identity so much that you feel like they can’t be separated,” Mr. West explained last year in a video.

‘I’m clearly autistic. Growing up as a girl, I was a tomboy, the category of girls meant nothing to me. I was like one of the boys.”

Mr. West has regularly documented his inpatient treatment for mental health problems.

He also revealed in March this year that he had been diagnosed with Ehlers Danlos Syndrome, a group of rare hereditary conditions that affect connective tissue.

“I only have my walking stick now, still waiting for the NDIS to get my wheelchair ready,” he wrote on social media.

“I’ve been trying to get one since 2021.”

In 2021, Mr. West raised nearly $3,000 on a GoFundMe page to help him access psychiatric inpatient care after he was allegedly “outed” by a YouTuber.

“He claimed I was pretending to be transgender, pretending to be autistic, pretending to be disabled, misrepresenting me, mocking me, making fun of my appearance, my weight, my transition, my body,” Mr West wrote .

‘I tried my hardest to pretend it didn’t bother me, but in August 2019 I tried to commit suicide because of it.’

Daily Mail Australia approached Mr West for comment.