From our experience, we learned there are some common misunderstandings about how we work out what supports meet the NDIS funding criteria.
Why don’t we always fund what your health professionals recommend?
Although we take expert opinions into account, we can’t and don’t always fund everything your health professional might recommend. This is because every support we fund needs to meet all the NDIS funding criteria.
For example, your therapist might recommend a piece of equipment on the basis that it will be ‘effective and beneficial’ for you. But if there is something cheaper that will achieve the same outcome, we won’t be able to fund what the therapist recommended.
This is because it won’t be value for money. We may be able to fund the cheaper option instead if it meets all the NDIS funding criteria.
Why don’t we fund the same supports as your last plan?
We might fund different supports in your next plan. This is because we will fund supports in your plan based on how we use the NDIS funding criteria at that point in time.
Your needs and situation will most likely change over time. This means it’s likely your NDIS supports and funding for those supports will change over time.
For example, we may have funded supports to help you build your skills in a particular area. Once you have built those skills, you won’t need funding for that any more. So, we probably won’t include that funding for those supports in your next plan.
Supports to build your skills may have met the NDIS funding criteria before, but the same supports might not meet the criteria in future.
Or, your disability support needs might increase or decrease over time. This may mean we consider funding more or less supports as a result.
What happens if you don’t use all your funding in your NDIS plan?
We will consider how you have used your NDIS funding to help us work out what supports meet the NDIS funding criteria in your next plans.
If you haven’t used all the funding by the end of your plan, it doesn’t mean we’ll reduce the funding in your next plan. There may be very good reasons why you weren’t able to buy the supports we funded.
When we reassess your plan, we’ll talk about any problems you had buying the supports funded in your plan. We’ll also see how we can help you use your funding if we need to.
But if you consistently don’t buy all the supports we fund and use all of your NDIS funding, we need to think about whether the supports really do meet the NDIS funding criteria.
For example, they may not be ‘effective and beneficial’ for you if you’re not actually using them. We will talk to you about this when we reassess your plan.
Learn more about changing your plan.