This boy personifies the NDIS issue expected to dominate 2025
Meet Eddy.
He’s 20 months old and loves stories, music and climbing.
“We always joke that he’s half monkey,” his mum Lauren Peroni says.
Eddy is blind and his family has been told by specialists he needs prosthetic eye lenses, costing thousands of dollars each, every six to eight months until he stops growing.
Without new lenses to prop up his growing eye sockets, Eddy’s at risk of part of his face collapsing, leaving him with permanent structural damage.
Prosthetic lenses can ensure tears drain normally, and importantly, Eddy’s family hopes they’ll help him socially, too.
Eddy was 13 months old when he was fitted with his first pair of lenses at Melbourne’s Royal Children’s Hospital, which is primarily funded by the state government.
In most jurisdictions, non-cosmetic eye prostheses are generally funded by state health departments — but in Victoria, the government covers the first pair and assesses future requests on a case-by-case basis.
Lauren says she was told after Eddy’s first set, she’d need to fund the prosthetics herself or apply to the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS), which funds other prosthetics.
Eddy is an NDIS participant but the scheme rejected his application for prosthetic lenses twice, saying “another government service is responsible”.
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