If you’re not eligible, you can’t become an NDIS participant.

We’ll try and contact you by phone, or your preferred contact method, to explain why you’re not eligible. We will give you reasons for our decision, and also answer any questions you might have.

We’ll also send you a letter with our decision, including the reasons you’re not eligible and what to do next. Your letter will confirm the date we made the decision.

Even if you’re not eligible for the NDIS, your early childhood partner or local area coordinator can help you explore and access mainstream and community supports in your community.

When we work with children under 9 and their families, we call this early connections. When we work with people aged 9–64, we call this community connections.

Your early childhood partner or local area coordinator will use the information you shared to suggest mainstream and community supports in your community.

They will work with you to see how these supports may help you with what is important to you.

The information might be recorded in a community connections or early connections plan, or it might be a conversation.

We also have a list of other government and community supports you can get, even if you’re not eligible for the NDIS.

What if you don’t agree with our decision?

If you don’t agree with our decision that you’re not eligible, you should contact us . We can help explain our decision and what your options or next steps might be.

You can also ask for an internal review.  Another staff member, who wasn’t involved in the original decision, will then check if we made the right decision. You need to ask for an internal review within 3 months after receiving the decision.  

Learn more about reviewing our decisions.

But you can’t ask for an internal review if:

• you withdraw your application because you don’t want to apply anymore
• a decision has not been made and we ask you for more information
• we withdraw your application because you didn’t give us information on time
• it’s been more than 3 months since you received our decision that you’re not eligible.

If you don’t agree with the internal review decision, you can ask the Administrative Appeals Tribunal to review it. We call this an external review. You can’t ask for an external review until after we make the internal review decision. 

You can contact us to discuss any concerns you may have about the process. You can also make a complaint if you’re not happy with any part of the process.

Can you apply again?

Yes. If we decide you're not eligible, you can apply again.  You’ll follow the same process to apply as you did the first time. Remember, you need to be younger than 65 on the day you make your new application. And children with developmental delay will need to be younger than 6 on the day they apply.

But if you’ve asked for an internal review of the decision, you can’t apply to the NDIS again until we’ve completed that review.  You can ask us to stop our internal review at any time. 

Also, if your review is with the Administrative Appeals Tribunal after an internal review, you can’t apply again until it has made a decision.  You can also ask the Tribunal at any time to withdraw your application.

Learn more on the Administrative Appeals Tribunal website .