What information do we consider to work out what reasonable and necessary supports to fund in your plan?
The most important information we gather about what supports to include in your plan comes from you.
When we create your plan, we will talk with you about:
- your goals and aspirations
- your strengths, capacity and individual circumstances
- any barriers, limitations and restrictions you face in undertaking activities or things that stop you from living an ‘ordinary life’
- your disability support needs
- any risks and safeguards we may need to think about when considering your support needs.
We use this information to create your plan with you. Generally, we'll discuss this information before you become an NDIS participant. We’ll continue to discuss it when we check-in with you once you have your plan. Learn more about check-ins in Our Guideline – Your plan.
We want to get a good understanding of your disability support needs. We know you’re the expert in your own life, and we use your lived experience as much as we can. When we ask for information from you, we encourage you to involve anyone you want to help you give us this information.
We’ll also think about other information we have such as medical or therapy reports, or assessments you’ve had.
We look at different types of evidence for different types of supports. We may need a report or assessment from your doctor or health professional who specialises in helping you manage your disability.
Reports and assessments may tell us why you need the support and how the support relates to your disability support needs. For example, an occupational therapist may send us a letter about why you need a specific type of wheelchair.
When we create a new plan for you during a reassessment we think about the supports in your current plan. We’ll check if you need any changes to these supports to help you pursue your goals in your next plan. We use information from your providers to let us know how the supports they are providing have helped you work towards your goals.
We’ll look at the evidence we get to make sure we have enough information to decide if the support meets the NDIS funding criteria. Sometimes we may ask for further information and assessments, if we need them to help us work out your support needs when we approve your plan.
Learn more about the types of evidence we can use when we create your plan.
To help us work out what supports to consider for people aged 9 years and older we also use a ‘Typical Support Package’. We worked with people with disability, professionals and subject matter experts to develop the Typical Support Package.
It helps us work out the types of supports we’d usually expect to include in your plan. It’s based on your situation and support needs.
We then amend the supports suggested by the Typical Support Package to include more, less or different supports if we need to.
We may adjust the funding for those supports up or down based on our discussion with you, the information you share with us
any reports or other information we have, and when we apply the NDIS funding criteria.
For children younger than 9, we consider the child's current functioning across development areas when we work out the reasonable and necessary supports that should be funded in a child’s NDIS plan. Learn more about the Early Childhood Early Intervention approach.
How do we consider your goals when we work out your reasonable and necessary supports?
Before we create your plan, we’ll discuss your current goals and personal details, including things like your living arrangements and current supports. We’ll include this information in your plan. Your goals are your own personal desires about what you’d like to do.
You can set any goals you like, even if they’re about things we won’t fund supports for. You can also change your goals at any time. We consider how your funded supports will help you pursue your goals when we decide to approve your plan.
Reasonable and necessary supports should help you pursue your goals, but you don’t need a specific goal for every support in your plan. When we decide if a support will help you pursue your goals, we consider your whole situation.
We look at the disability specific barriers that prevent you from pursuing your goals, and how the support will address your disability support needs.
There are some things to remember when setting goals:
- Setting more and bigger goals doesn’t mean we’ll fund more and bigger funded supports.
- Setting a goal doesn’t mean we have an obligation to fund supports that help you pursue that goal.
- Setting a goal about an explicit type or amount of support you might want doesn’t mean we have an obligation to fund that support or in that amount.
This is because helping you pursue your goals is only one of the NDIS funding criteria. A support must meet all of the NDIS funding criteria to be funded under the NDIS. So not all supports that help you to pursue your goals will be reasonable and necessary supports.
Learn more about setting your goals and how we consider your goals under the NDIS funding criteria.