Canberra community organisations fear older clients will be unfairly impacted by the transition to the National Disability Insurance Scheme.
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People aged 65 years and over do not meet the age requirements to access NDIS.
Services supporting large proportions of older Australians are concerned they won't have enough funding to sustain programs for unfunded seniors as only those currently receiving a disability service qualify for the Commonwealth Continuity of Support program.
The Deafness Resource Centre (DRC) ACT has applied for a NDIS Information, Linkages and Capacity Building (ILC) program grant and will wait until late June to hear what money they will receive.
President Glenn Vermeulen said half the centre's current client base was over 65 and staff had been cautiously reviewing what would be cut if a funding shortfall occurred.
The centre formerly received close to $250,000 in direct ACT government funding but Mr Vermeulen said he was "categorically told there would be no further funding coming from the ACT government."
He said a dip in total funding would mean the centre's consultation hours would be halved, home-visits would be scrapped along with specific programs targeting the needs of the over 65 age group.
"I have had meetings with the minister for disability and had those conversations to say a large portion of our demographic are over 65 and the NDIS doesn't cater to them," he said.
75-year-old Rosina Wainwright got a hearing aid three years ago. She does not currently receive disability or aged care support and saves up to pay upfront for her adaptive technology.
She has a louder adaptive phone and doorbells, and recently purchased a Roger pen, a wireless microphone shaped as a pen which feeds amplified conversation back into her hearing aid.
The tools and training she continued to receive through DRC ACT enabled her to hear more and feel confident to be active and social.
"Losing your hearing is not like wearing glasses," she said. "The Deafness Resource Centre keeps me up to date with thing that really help me."
Royal Society for the Blind ACT coordinator Rachel Rawlinson said the society's ACT branch was not seeking an ILC grant from the NDIA, but shared similar concerns about its older clients.
After 65 years, vision impairment was categorised as an ageing rather than a disability issue, but Ms Rawlinson said under aged care arrangements for blindness and low vision, older Australians were being "set up to fail".
"[The system] needs to understand that although people live relatively independent lives they do so through allied health services and through adaptive technology and equipment. That is where the funding needs to lie," she said.
"There is no funding available for those things and without it they are being forced into this model of dependency which the government will pay for."
ACT disability minister Rachel Stephen-Smith said hearing and aged care services were "the responsibility of the federal government".
The minister said DRC ACT benefited from transitional funding in 2016-17 and a two-month extension to provide it certainty until the ILC funding round was announced.
She said having the territory fund services twice was not the answer.
"It is frustrating for the ACT government to essentially duplicate funding for a service where the previous ACT government funding has been cashed out to the NDIS," she said.
She urged DRC ACT and organisations in a similar position "to look for opportunities within the wide range of funding opportunities provided by the federal government".
