Designer featured on Gardening Australia fears NDIA change a threat to his life

Designer featured on Gardening Australia stripped of NDIS support funding Mon 29 Jun 2026 at 8:23am In short: A Central Victorian garden designer who lives with Duchene Muscular Dystrophy says sudden changes to his NDIS plan put his life at risk. Joshua Ruff says the National Disability Insurance Agency has stripped him of the ability to choose and manage his support team. What's next? Mr Ruff fears he will end up in hospital due to a lack of trained staff to adequately attend to his needs on his rural property A Central Victorian man says the National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIA) has robbed him of dignity and is risking his life with sudden changes to his NDIS plan. Joshua Ruff, 33, has Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy and lives in Maldon on a lavender farm he designed, which featured on ABC TV's Gardening Australia last year. Mr Ruff uses a wheelchair and has been self-managing his NDIS support package since 2017, including paying family members to help care for him on the rural property. A health scare Mr Ruff suffered a cardiac arrest in March and needed a prolonged hospital stay. It resulted in a tracheostomy and full respiratory support. Mr Ruff asked for an NDIS plan review on his release from hospital, due to the additional needs. But he says that, against his wishes, the NDIA converted his plan from self-managed to agency-managed. The NDIA also told Mr Ruff he could no longer engage family members as his paid NDIS support workers. An email from an NDIA representative to Mr Ruff after a meeting on June 12 said the NDIA would only pay family members to deliver support in 'exceptional circumstances'. "The NDIA will work with the participant and their family to identify suitable support providers," the email said. The NDIA has been contacted for comment. Still capable Mr Ruff said the sudden decision came without 'genuine consultation', and robbed him of autonomy and dignity. "The current supports have been there for five or six years and they (support workers) understand my conditions … I'm able to trust them and they understand me very deeply in how to care for me," he said. "I rely completely on the supports I have carefully built around me to stay alive and to live with dignity," he wrote in a letter to the NDIA on June 24. He wrote that, in his regional community, "specialist disability workers are scarce … this is not a team that can be replaced overnight, or at all". He said the NDIA had not provided him any assistance to transition to a new model. "I have been left to navigate a system I did not choose, was not prepared for and is actively failing me," he wrote. Mr Ruff says his cardiac arrest and tracheostomy tube have had no affect on his mental capacity. "My cognitive abilities have not changed," Mr Ruff said. "I pay for all my support, I manage the rostering, and I do everything that keeps my life exactly how I've set it up to be." He said that his treating specialists at the Austin Hospital had assessed and endorsed his support workers. "I'm very overwhelmed and I'm quite frustrated and annoyed in the way I've been treated," he said. "They've taken that agency and control away from me." New plan "not safe" Mr Ruff's support coordinator, Zachary Muir, wrote to the NDIA saying he believed the new plan put his client's life at risk. "These changes place Joshua at immediate and significant risk of serious harm and potential loss of life due to the complexity and intensity of his care needs," Mr Muir wrote in a letter. "The removal of self-management and the prohibition of remunerating family members as supports introduces a critical breakdown in continuity of care. "Disruption of this model without an equivalent replacement pathway is not safe." Plan switches 'not uncommon' People with Disability Australia interim president Jarrod Sandell-Hay said shifts in the managements of NDIS packages were happening too often. "Choice and control is at the heart of the NDIS and self-management plays a really big part in that," he said. "People have a right to decide who comes into their home, who feeds them veggies and who touches their body. "Regardless of what kind of support you have, plan management is the secret, the special sauce, to make that all happen. "Having this [self-management] becoming less common is a really big risk and a really big failure of our system that was built on choice and control." Mr Ruff has contacted his local federal MP Lisa Chesters for assistance.