Note: When we say disability support needs, we mean supports you need for the impairments that meet the disability or early intervention requirements, or both.
Case
Suresh wants to improve his personal fitness to help manage the effects of his disability. He thinks going to the gym will help. Suresh asks us to fund his gym membership.
Would we fund this?
No, we would not fund a gym membership as it’s not an NDIS support. It is a day-to-day living cost not related to Suresh’s disability support needs.
Why wouldn’t we fund this?
NDIS laws determine what we can and can’t fund. Things we can fund are called NDIS supports.
You can only use the funding in your plan to buy NDIS supports if they are related to your disability and are in-line with your plan. We don’t fund supports that are day-to-day living costs for people.
If one of your goals is to get fit by going to a gym or playing sport, we may fund a disability-related support or assistive technology to help you to do these activities, but not the gym membership itself.
We can fund disability-related supports to help you take part in activities that will help you with your social and economic life. The supports must show value for money in relation to both benefits of the support and the cost of similar supports.
We must also consider what families and other informal supports would usually provide.
To work out whether a support to help your health and wellbeing goal is reasonable and necessary, we look at the information you give us against the NDIS funding criteria. You would need to give us evidence, such as assessments from a registered therapist, to show you need the support for your disability needs.
What else do we think about?
We may fund things such as:
- transport to and from the gym, if your family or the community can’t provide it and you aren’t able to use public transport independently
- funding for a care worker to help you to use the gym equipment.
We can also fund assistive products used in sports or other recreational activities but only if they relate to your disability. You are still responsible for registration fees, uniforms or any other costs that everyone pays when playing sport whether or not they have a disability.
Case example
Sue’s genetic condition causes intellectual disability, behavioural and learning issues. She wants to improve her personal fitness. She has been unable to join a gym as most gyms can’t accept a member who needs someone supporting the mat all times while they exercise.
Sue applies for funding for gym membership and for a support worker to help her at the gym. To work out whether we would fund a gym membership and a support worker for Sue, the planner looks at the information provided against the NDIS funding criteria. In Sue’s case, the planner decides that:
- a gym membership is not an NDIS support, so we wouldn’t fund it
- if Sue chooses to self-fund her gym membership, we might fund a support worker to help her pursue her personal fitness goal and use the gym equipment. The need for a support worker to help Sue improve her personal fitness at the gym must be directly related to Sue’s disability support needs.
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