Your local area coordinator can help you find general information on programs and activities in your local community. You can contact them over the phone or in person at your nearest local area coordination partner office.
If you need more support, you can meet with a local area coordinator to discuss your situation and needs. Your local area coordinator will listen to you and talk about the mainstream and community supports available in your community.
You’ll work together to understand how these supports may help you pursue your goals.
If someone is seeking support on your behalf, we’ll talk to both of you about consent.
We’ll look at whether they have authority to act on your behalf. In some cases, more information may be needed before we can work with you on community connections.
What can you expect when we meet with you?
They’ll start by working with you to get some general information. They’ll work with you to understand your needs and current situation.
Your local area coordinator will ask you about what’s important to you.
This will help them understand the life you want to live, and your goals. Your goals are your own personal desires about what you’d like to do.
You can have as many or as few goals as you want. They can be big or small, short-term or long-term, simple or complex.
We’ll talk with you about what your goals will mean for community connections. We can’t change your goals or choose them for you.
But we can help you think about how you want to word them.
All the information you give helps us work out the best supports to meet your needs. We’ll keep your personal information safe and secure.
Learn more about your privacy and information.
You can also ask other people to help you if you want to. For example, you can have friends, family or an advocate join the conversation about community connections.
When you meet with your local area coordinator, they’ll ask you about:
- your situation
- what’s important to you, including goals you’d like to pursue
- your current strengths and abilities
- your current supports and services
- areas where you may need more support
- how well the current supports and services meet your needs
- what help you need to build your skills to do more things yourself
- the types of community and government services you are using.
Your local area coordinator will show you what connections are available in your local community that could support you.
If you want, we can give you a record of what we talk about with you. We call this a community connections plan.
It is completely optional. You don’t have to create a community connections plan with your local area coordinator unless you want to. It isn’t needed to apply to the NDIS.
It’s up to you to decide how you want to use the information we talk with you about. If you want, we can put this information in a community connections plan.
This lets you record your goals and the supports that can help you work towards them.
A community connections plan might be helpful if:
- you’re happy to give us information about you, like your address and date of birth
- you want the information we talk about written down
- you need more support than one or two conversations
- you don’t want to be a participant of the NDIS, but would like to record your support needs and options in a document we can give to you.
Example
Jamie has just completed a Patisserie training certificate and dreams of being a pastry chef. Jamie has a mild disability and wants some support to prepare for work and find a job.
Jamie contacts his local area coordinator and asks about what supports are available. The local area coordinator talks to Jamie about his situation.
Jamie prepares some goals with his local area coordinator, including a goal to find the right job. And a goal to be supported to start and keep his new job.
The local area coordinator records Jamie’s goals and information about his current supports.
The local area coordinator also records and shares information about mainstream supports available to help Jamie prepare for and find a job.
For example, one of the mainstream supports is a local employment service that provides support for people starting out in work.
Once Jamie finds a job, the employment service will also work with his new employer to make sure the workplace is inclusive and provides any reasonable adjustments Jamie needs.
At the end of the meeting, Jamie leaves with the information they discussed in a community connections plan. Including his goals, current supports and the community and mainstream supports he can get to help him work towards his employment goals.
Jamie also has a record of the next steps he needs to take.
Jamie gets help to find and adjust to a new job through one of the mainstream supports he talked about with his local area coordinator, a local employment service.
Once Jamie has connected with this employment service, he receives the support he needs for preparing for work and is on his way to finding the right job.
Jamie doesn’t need any more help to make community connections, for now.
Jamie knows he can always talk to his local area coordinator if he needs more help in future.
Example
Zaina is a 19-year-old university student who lives with friends in a share house.
She has just been diagnosed with a degenerative condition and wants to know what options and services are available to her if her condition worsens.
Zaina comes to talk to her local area coordinator to find out what supports and services are in her local area.
Her local area coordinator talks to Zaina to find out more about her and her situation. They explain the ways we can help her find supports and services in her community.
For example, giving her information on what services are available in Zaina’s local area and helping her to make connections with mainstream services.
The local area coordinator asks Zaina if she’d like help to make community connections. They need some personal information to do this.
Right now, Zaina just wants some information to know what type of help is available near her, so they give her information about support groups and local services that are available in the area.
After 6 months, Zaina’s situation changes. She contacts her local area coordinator to get more information, and she asks for more help to make community connections this time.
She talks about her situation with her local area coordinator. Zaina decides she wants to apply to the NDIS. Her local area coordinator helps her apply.