As the DisabilityCare program is rolled out nationwide some kinks have yet to be worked out in the provision of help to Indigenous communities.

The Federal Government does not have a concrete plan for tailoring the system to Aboriginal needs, with figures from the last census showing around half of Australia’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island residents live with some form of disability or long term health condition.

Reports say the problem is twofold; issues with infrastructure, access and staffing plague remote communities, and patients are reticent to travel to existing DisabilityCare trial sites located in urban areas.

Leaving the traditional home for Government health care at another location is a concerning concept for many. Keith Jurrah, a diabetes sufferer from the tiny community of Papunya said it was hard to leave his spiritual home; “I want to go back to Papunya …we need someone who can stay there helping," he said, “the Government has got this thing going on they started off in big cities like Geelong. Why can't they start in this area, the most remote area?"

The First Peoples Disability Network has been created to develop strategies that will ensure Aboriginal people have access to DisabilityCare. Damian Griffis, the head of the Network, says it is a hard place to start because 'disability' is a foreign concept in indigenous communities.

"Disability can be viewed as a bad karma form of disability, so a bad spirit may have caused the disability," Mr Griffis says, “in some communities it's described as married wrong way and that is why your child has a disability”

"We are starting from a baseline position. Disability is a new conversation across many Aboriginal communities... we need to invest heavily in a concerted outreach approach, we need to sit down in community and have a yarn about these issues and we need to have aboriginal people themselves leading those discussions," he said.

There is the infrastructure problem too, with many rural areas woefully under-equipped  Authorities say the introduction of the DisabilityCare scheme will run up against numerous challenges extending its services to the bush.