How do we make a change to your plan?

We’ll work with you to change your plan. We’ll think about the type of change your plan needs to meet your needs. We’ll let you know what type of plan change we’re doing, a plan reassessment or plan variation, and what that means.

Usually, we’ll do a plan change either in person or over the phone. It depends on what suits you best. You can ask a family member, friend, advocate, or other support person to be involved in your plan change.

Everyone’s plan changes are different. When we’re working with you to change your plan, depending on what type of change we’re doing, and the sort of changes we’re making, we may look at different things.

The length of time from the start of a plan to the reassessment date won’t be for the same for everyone. It depends on your personal situation, goals, and support needs.

Learn more about how long your plan will go for when we create your plan.

Sometimes when we’re doing a plan reassessment or plan variation we may also check to see if you’re still eligible for the NDIS. We call this process an eligibility reassessment. This is a normal part of the plan reassessment and variation process.

Learn more about when you’re no longer eligible for the NDIS .

What happens during a plan variation?

When we do a plan variation, we’ll work with you to understand how your situation has changed. We think about the information you have raised and work with you to make any necessary changes to your current plan.

All supports in your varied plan must meet the NDIS funding criteria. This includes the supports that were already in your plan.

When we vary your plan, we will let you know the date when the variation to your plan starts. This can only be on or after the day we decide to vary your plan.  

What happens during a plan reassessment?

When we do a plan reassessment, we must complete the reassessment and decide to either:

  • vary your plan (as a result of the reassessment)
  • prepare and approve a new plan. 

When we do a plan reassessment, we think about all the information we have about you, your goals, situation, and support needs. We reassess all the supports you require to meet your disability support needs. Some supports may no longer be required, while others may increase or change.

We’ll usually look at how you’ve been using your supports and how well your previous plans worked for you.  We look at how much funding you used for supports in your current plan. This will help us decide if the supports are still working for you.

If you haven’t used all the funding by your plan reassessment date, 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 use the funding.

We might talk about any problems you have using your funding and support you to get help with this. If you consistently don’t use your NDIS funding, we 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.

Your needs and situation will most likely change over time. This means it’s likely your NDIS funding will change over time. For example, your disability support needs might increase, and we might consider funding more supports.

Or, we might 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 anymore. So, we probably won’t include that funding in your next plan.

Supports to build your skills may have met the NDIS funding criteria before, but it might not meet the criteria in future.

All supports in your new plan must meet the NDIS funding criteria.

What happens if we need more information?

We might need more information or an assessment to help us change your plan. This helps us understand what supports you need. We might ask you for:

  • a new assessment and report, if your last assessment was a long time ago, and doesn’t tell us about your current support needs
  • more information about your support needs, from a suitably qualified person such as your doctor or psychologist
  • information from a provider about how you have progressed towards your goals.

We gather information about what supports to include in your plan from you during your check in. 

We must give you a reasonable opportunity, and a reasonable amount of time, to give us the information.  We’ll review the information you give us to make sure the supports meet the NDIS funding criteria. The sooner you can give us the information, the sooner we can change and approve your plan.

In some situations, we may need to approve your plan before you get an assessment or give us information. If this happens, we may then do a CEO initiated plan change after we receive the reports. This could be a plan variation or a plan reassessment. 

For example, we might approve your plan so you have funding for urgent self-care supports. We could then do CEO initiated plan change afterwards once you have the assessments and reports for other supports such as assistive technology.
 

This page current as of
27 October 2023
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