We need to know your goals and aspirations so we know how we can help you.
Your goals are your own and tell us about the things you’d like to do. You can have as many or as few goals as you want.
Your goals can be big or small, short term or long term, simple or complex. They can be about anything you want to work towards.
You may express your goals broadly, or you may have specific goals. For example, one of your goals might be to ’live independently’, and another might be ‘to have an accessible bathroom’.
You, your plan nominee or child representative set your goals and tell us what information you want to include about your life.
If you want, your family and friends who support you can also give us information about their life.
You can tell us about your goals at any time, even after we’ve approved your plan. If you tell us your goals, we’ll record them and send you a new copy of your plan with your updated goals.
They are your goals, and we’ll write them down in your own words. We can’t change your goals or choose them for you. But we can help you choose what words to use if you want us to.
Who can help you set your goals?
You can ask other people for help to set your goals if you want to. For example, your friends, family, or my NDIS contact can help you.
We’ll talk with you about what your goals will mean for your NDIS plan.
For example, we could talk about:
- what your goals will look like for you
- how you can work towards your goals
- when you’d like to work on your goals
- what supports you need to work towards your goals. But just because you have a goal doesn’t mean we have to fund supports for it
- where you might get supports to work towards your goals, for example community or mainstream services
- what NDIS supports we might be able to fund to help you work towards your goals
- what supports you need to overcome any challenges in working towards your goals
- how you could develop skills and talents you haven’t focused on before
- if you’d like to include smaller goals as part of a big goal
- if you’d like to add a few steps to work towards your goals.
For example, you might choose a goal, ‘I want to find a part time job where I can use my computer skills’. You might also want to choose to add steps to work towards this goal, like building your skills in looking for a job.
Learn more about setting your goals .
Will we always fund supports for your goals?
NDIS laws determine what we can and can’t fund. Things we fund are called NDIS supports. NDIS supports are the services, items and equipment that can be funded by the NDIS. You can use the funding in your plan to buy NDIS supports if they are related to your disability and are in line with your plan. The NDIS supports we fund should help you pursue your goals, but you don’t need a specific goal for every support in your plan. When we decide if an NDIS support will help you pursue your goals, we think about your whole situation.
There are some things to remember when setting goals:
- setting more and bigger goals doesn’t mean we’ll provide more NDIS supports or more funding
- setting a goal doesn’t mean we have an obligation to fund NDIS 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 to fund that support or in that amount.
This is because helping you pursue your goals is only one of the NDIS funding criteria. So not all supports that help you pursue your goals will be reasonable and necessary supports we can fund in your plan.
For example, you might be ready to look for work and have a goal to find a job. Disability Employment Services help people with a disability look for jobs. This is not an NDIS support that we can fund.
But we can help you connect with a Disability Employment Service. We can also think about what NDIS supports we could fund to help build your job skills.
Learn more about work and study supports.
Learn more about how we consider your goals when we decide what NDIS supports to include in your plan.