A former paralympic champion has urged the ACT government to help a local charity that creates assisted technology for Canberrans with a disability to keep operating.
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The organisation, Technical Aid to the Disabled ACT (TADACT), in July this year lost its $150,000 a year annual funding from the ACT government.
It is one of many organisations in the ACT now struggling financially after losing Territory funding as disability services were moved to the National Disability Insurance Scheme.
Michael Milton, an ambassador for TADACT, said the organisation was struggling to stay afloat due to a lag in the time it took for NDIS participants to be able to get needed equipment from prosthetics to adapted wheelchairs.
"Funding via the NDIS was supposed to fill the gap but, put simply, it hasn't," he said.
"Disability can be very individual and unique and, for some, it's not just a case of buying what they need off the shelf.
"Often they don't even know what they need; they just come to TADACT with a problem and a small army of volunteers comes up with a solution."
TADACT executive director Jennifer Merriman said the organisation was the only one providing such a service in the ACT and southern New South Wales region.
She said NDIS planners were also not allowed to promote specific services and the small team of three volunteers could not afford the marketing budgets some larger organisations had to promote their services.
As a result it was difficult to raise TADACT's profile to attract more clients.
"It's not just us, whenever I go along to meetings for disability service providers, I'm told by everyone that they've been struggling since the NDIS came in," she said.
"There's a lag between people getting plans, often without a specific piece of equipment they need, until their next review 12 months later, when the planners often realise they need something.
"That lag has meant in the first year of the NDIS in the ACT, we had only three clients coming to us and last financial year only 26 clients and that's just not enough to keep operating."
Ms Merriman said the organisation was struggling as their administrative workload had doubled under the NDIS, but the ACT government had been cut and unlike other organisations, which provide ongoing services, clients often only needed assisted technology once.
"It's rare that we'll see a client again after we've been able to manufacture a piece of technology or modify something they already have so it's more suitable to there needs," she said.
"If we don't get any funding, we won't be around in 2018."
New ACT Disability Minister, Rachel Stephen-Smith, said she would be meeting with TADACT next Tuesday to discuss their concerns, but stopped short of offering funds.
"The ACT government is committed to supporting providers through the transition to the NDIS, both financially and with information and advice," she said.
"TADACT has received support under the transitional funding arrangements and the Community Services Directorate is continuing to work proactively with them."
