Overall, there was the sense that IF left disabled people and their whānau in more control over the services and how they are delivered: “The beauty of IF funding and personalised budgets is that we employ our own, we don’t go through agencies… I cannot emphasise enough how important it is for us or our whānau to be in charge of our own funding support.” (Māori submission) Some submissions noted that people with IF arrangements had more flexibility, for example, in finding replacement support workers. Other submissions noted that IF arrangements came with additional administrative requirements (that go hand in hand with being an employer). For example, according to some submissions, ACC has taken the view that it isn’t their role to provide PPE to people who (through IF) are employers of carers. When these are being supplied to other providers for free this appears to create unjustifiable inequities for disabled people based on the types of funding arrangements they have with government agencies: “People on IF are not being treated as providers, therefore what they are entitled in the form of support to keep themselves protected is different i.e. access to RAT tests for staff.” (Submission) “Some users of these services have said they provide more flexibility in that they can use IF to pay for whānau and friends but most are using these supports regularly anyway. People have been left with support workers due to no replacement workforce for IF users and no one to support them with alternative arrangements for home care.” (Māori submission) Health services availability The right of disabled people to the highest attainable standards of health remains a concern for many who have raised issues around access to high quality health services for disabled people and their whānau during the pandemic response. For some submissions, this translated to a concern that a disproportionate effort was going into COVID-19 measures, rather than other priority health issues for disabled people and their whānau: “Sometimes [there has been] too much information/focus on COVID-19 vaccines, particularly by GPs, to the detriment of other health issues.” (Submission) For some, there was considerable concern that COVID-19 related health issues would not be picked up by health professionals, particularly so where there was no face-to-face contact with disabled people because of COVID-19 restrictions, and that this would result in disabled people becoming very unwell: “Very concerned that no community support checks for people with Down syndrome reporting positive results… We know that people with Down syndrome do not always report feeling unwell, so they could be extremely unwell and need treatment hospitalisation and will be needing to navigate this on their own.” (Submission) 34 Inquiry into the Support of Disabled People and Whānau During Omicron