Assistance Animals - Requirements for psychiatric assistance dogs - Hollis and NDIA [2021] AATA 2888

Key points

• In Hollis and NDIA [2021] AATA 2888 [opens in new window] the Tribunal analyses requirements in order to obtain NDIS funding for the registration and upkeep of a dog who the applicant claimed had been trained to by a psychiatric assistance dog. 
• The Tribunal's decision states that at a minimum, among other things, a psychiatric assistance dog will have to be trained to standards set by Assistance Dogs International. That requirement could have the effect of severely limiting access to funding for psychiatric assistance dogs in Australia, given the limited number of Australian organisations providing psychiatric assistance dogs that appear to meet this standard.

Facts

Mr Hollis has a number of psychiatric conditions, including complex PTSD, dyslexia, anxiety and chronic grief. He sought funding for various supports, including funding for registration and upkeep of his toy poodle, Pluto, who Mr Hollis stated was trained to provide him with emotional support and psychiatric support. Pluto was 12 years old at the time of the Tribunal's decision.

Pluto was accredited by MindDog. Evidence was given that the accreditation process takes about 12 to 18 months. The focus of this accreditation is on public access, that is, whether the dog is sufficiently obedient and trained to be able to access public spaces. Although Pluto had been accredited by MindDog, the MindDog representative was uncertain about the precise training that Pluto had received.

Mr Hollis gave evidence that Pluto had been trained to do a number of things, including licking his hand, making eye contact, showing affection, not sniffing food in shops, sitting and staying in shops and travelling on busses. The assessor from MindDog assessed Pluto as being able to: 

• mitigate Mr Hollis's social isolation, meaning that Pluto causes Mr Hollis to leave his home every day;
• use deep pressure therapy, by applying pressure to Mr Hollis with his paw or by lying on him; and
• calm Mr Hollis when he is anxious.

The Tribunal received evidence from a Dr Howell, a Research Fellow in Psychology and Public Health at La Trobe University. She gave evidence about common practice concerning assistance animals in Australia. She observed that training usually begins when the dog is between 6 months old and 2 years old, and that the working life of the dog is usually between 8 and 10 years. 

Dr Howell stated that Pluto's advanced age and chronic health conditions would severely limit his working life.

 

The Tribunal found that funding for Pluto's registration and upkeep would not represent value for money for the purposes of s 34(1)(c) of the NDIS Act [opens in new window]. It found that there was limited evidence about what assistance Pluto provided to mitigate Mr Hollis's disabilities. It also noted that Mr Hollis had funding for support workers that he had not fully used, and the support workers could assist Mr Hollis with the tasks that Pluto currently performed. 

The Tribunal also considered that funding in relation to Pluto would not be, or would not likely be, effective and beneficial to Mr Hollis having regard to current practice for the purposes of s 34(1)(d) of the NDIS Act [opens in new window]. It had regard to the NDIA's Operational Guideline for Assistance Animals [opens in new window]. 

Having regard to Dr Howell's evidence and the Guideline, the Tribunal concluded at [176] of the decision that good practice in relation to an assistance animal meant that at least the following needed to be established:

• the animal needed to be able to perform at least three tasks that can be identified as mitigating the effects of the person's disability;
• if the animal is providing support to a person with a psychiatric disability, the support must be specific to the needs of the person;
• a dog providing psychiatric disability assistance should have been trained in accordance with standards set by Assistance Dogs International (ADI); and
• the animal should have received a high level of training that makes it appropriate for the animal to access public places.

The Tribunal concluded that Pluto did not meet those standards, and that Pluto was not an assistance animal within the meaning of the NDIS Act or Rules. It affirmed the NDIA's decision to not provide funding for Pluto. 

Analysis

This decision is a useful analysis of the sometimes blurry line between a pet and an emotional assistance animal. The Tribunal has placed significant emphasis on the type of training that an animal receives, together with what the animal can do to alleviate the specific person's specific disability. That will likely require much more than demonstrating that an animal can perform the basic sort of tricks and obedience that owners commonly teach their pets. For psychiatric assistance animals, it will require owners to demonstrate that their animal addresses their specific psychiatric needs, rather than just provides the sort of emotional feedback and companionship that pets generally provide. 

However, the Tribunal's decision makes it rather difficult to obtain NDIS support for psychiatric assistance dogs. On my research, there is only one organisation in Australia that offers training to ADI standards for dogs for people affected by PTSD, and their wait list is currently full. I have identified one other organisation in Australia that is a member of ADI and who provides dogs for people affected by Autism Spectrum Disorder. This suggests that access to dogs that meet these criteria will be very limited. 

The Tribunal should consider whether this requirement is appropriate and consistent with the purposes of the NDIS Act, having regard to the fact that there is no national body in Australia that specifies standards that are required to be met by assistance animals. The requirement also appears inconsistent with s 9 of the Disability Discrimination Act 1992 (Cth) [opens in new window], which requires an assistance animal to be trained to alleviate the effect of a person's disability and meet standards of hygiene and behaviour appropriate for an animal in a public place, but which does not require that training to be in accordance with any particular organisation's standards.