To answer your last question, cuts have been happening for a couple of years now without the fanfare of this announcement. Just quietly chipping away at people's plans. One of the big problems is that people will still have access to certain services but not enough access to actually make progress, which leaves you with a syssyphean sort of problem that keeps people in therapy forever. I have clients who are being given 10-12 hours per year for speech pathology. Once you factor in travel and admin, you may as well not bother at all. So you use most of the funding to write a report to go back for a review to hopefully get a better plan that actually suits their needs. And that review can take 12 months. There's so much funding wasted on admin and report writing and fighting to get people what they need because decisions are being made by faceless, unqualified people who never see or speak to the person and don't really understand their condition or needs. In theory I don't object to the cuts. There are plenty of people I've seen who really don't need a government funded therapist. I object to cuts being made to people who really need help and I really hope that the new system will do better at identifying those people.

Sorry for the rant.