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 want to get a good understanding of your disability support needs. We encourage you to involve anyone in the planning process you want to help you.

Learn more about what information we ask for when we create Your plan.

We also consider other information we have such as medical or therapy reports, or assessments that you have had. 

We may also ask for further information and assessments, if we need them to help us work out your support needs. 

To help us work out what supports to consider for people aged 7 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, any reports or other information we have, and when we apply the NDIS funding criteria.

For children younger than 7, 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?

When we create your plan, you set your goals and tell us what information about your life you want 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.