We’ll talk to you about how we can support you to manage any risks to your funding, whether you are self-managing or using a registered plan manager. Before we make a plan management decision, we’ll think about:
- supports and strategies that can reduce the risk to you
- supports and strategies that have reduced the risk to you in a previous plan.
This includes informal, mainstream and community supports. In many cases this means you, your plan nominee, plan manager or child representative, will still be able to manage part or all of your funding.
We just need to make sure the risk to you is not an unreasonable risk.
We’ll consider the specific risk to you and look at suitable ways to help you manage the risk.
If you want to self-manage your funding, we can give general advice and information, which might be enough to manage any risks to you.
This includes information on things like employing your own staff and working with providers. If you’re new to self-management, we can work with you to try and solve any problems you have.
We might be able to fund a support coordinator or a registered plan manager to help you get started. Or include funding for training in self-management.
Other strategies we can consider to reduce risks to you include:
- giving you a plan with a shorter length of time or shorter funding periods
- having regular check-ins with you
- stating how a support in your plan needs to be purchased. For example, there might be only a few providers who can safely provide a specialised support.
When we think about risks, we also think about the types of supports you want to manage.
If there is an unreasonable risk to you if you, your plan nominee or child representative self-manage some supports, you might be able to manage other supports in your plan.
You might also be able to manage some of your funding now and manage more in the future if you’re ready.
For example, you may want to self-manage your funding but haven’t done it before. You may be unsure how to set up your budget and pay your providers.
It might be a good idea to start small. We could support you to link to a peer support network to get information from other self-managers about how they manage their payments.
For example, you might be able to start with self-managing the funding component amount for core supports such as social and community participation.
At regular check-ins you can let us know if you need any help to self-manage your funding, or if you want to manage more of your funding.
Once you’re familiar with the process of paying providers and keeping records, you might be ready to self-manage other parts of your funding.
If we can reduce the risk to you with supports and strategies, we’ll put funding in your plan for additional supports, if needed. We’ll also record what we have done and why.
If we can’t reduce the risk to you with supports and strategies, we may decide that:
- part or all of your plan should be managed by a registered plan manager
- part or all of your plan should be Agency-managed.
We’ll tell you why we have made this decision and talk about what we can do to support your plan management choice in the future.
If we decide to make part, or all, of your funding Agency-managed, you can only use NDIS registered providers for your supports. We’ll work with you to make sure you have the NDIS supports you need.