What continence products can we fund?
If you have urinary or faecal incontinence because of your disability, we may fund continence products.
This can include:
- pads or nappies
- bedding or chair protection
- liners or shields
- anal plugs.
We may also fund continence products if you have a catheter because of your disability. These products can include:
- collection bags
- bottles
- straps or tape.
If you have a stoma, you may be able to get stoma products and appliances through the Stoma Appliance Scheme (SAS) .
Learn more in What other support can you get if you have a stoma?
We’ll use reports from a continence nurse or other suitably qualified health professional to work out whether continence products meet the NDIS funding criteria for you. They can use our Continence related assistive technology assessment template or write their own report.
What if you need help to manage your continence support needs?
You might be able to manage your continence needs yourself. Or you may need help to use your continence products. You may also need help to clean or change your catheter or stoma if you have these.
A continence nurse can do a continence assessment to help work out what continence supports you need.
This includes:
- preparing your continence plan
- working out the continence products you need
- completing reviews of your continence plan.
We may fund this assessment if your incontinence is ongoing and directly related to your disability.
The types of support you need will vary based on your individual continence support needs and who can help you.
You may need help to manage your continence support needs because of your disability. In this case, we may fund a nurse or support worker to help manage your continence. For example, to clean a stoma and change the bag if your disability means you are not able to.
You may need support from a specific type of health professional for some of your disability-related continence support needs.
In this situation, we may fund the health professional to help with these supports. For example, we might fund a registered nurse to change your catheter. Or we may fund an enrolled nurse to help with cleaning your catheter.
A registered nurse or other qualified health professional may be able to train other people to help you manage your continence needs for some supports.
This could be family, friends, a carer or a support worker. We may be able to fund their training in your individual continence needs.
What about continence supports for children?
Children and young people with disabilities or developmental delay often need help with toileting daily. You, your family or carers will generally look after your child’s daily toileting support needs. We may fund support if your child needs more help than other children of the same age, without a disability or developmental delay.
Learn more about development delay in Our Guideline about our early childhood approach.
For children 5 years of age or older we may fund:
- continence supports for use throughout the day
- continence supports at night when toilet trained during the day – for example nappies
- a bed wetting alarm which a continence nurse may recommend.
We can only fund these supports if we have evidence they are related to your child’s disability or developmental delay. Evidence can include a continence assessment. The assessment must be completed by a continence nurse or other suitably qualified health professional.
In rare situations we may include funding for continence supports for children younger than 5 for disability-related medical conditions.
This may include if we have evidence your child will always need help to manage their continence due to their disability-related medical condition.
It may also include if their continence support needs are more costly due to their disability related medical condition, or they have higher care needs than other children of the same age.
For example, if your child uses disposable urinary catheters.
We can only fund these supports if they meet the NDIS funding criteria for your child.
Learn more in our Would we fund it guides for continence and early childhood continence.