There are three types of support budgets that may appear in your NDIS plan: core, capacity building and capital supports. Your NDIS planner will tailor your NDIS plan with support budget categories and funding connected to achieving your goals and supporting you in your day-to-day life.
The core supports budget is funding to support all your assistance with day-to-day tasks that relate to your plan and life goals. Your core funding is where all your carer, support worker, cleaning and other regular expenses will be paid from. The core budget is often flexible across the four support budget categories meaning you can choose to spend your funding interchangeably between them. For example, you may want to spend more of your total core funding on continence products and less on your transport expenses. The four budget support categories under core support are:
Name on NDIS portal – “Daily Activities”. This budget will cover all your expenses related to assisting you to undertake daily tasks. This could include:
Funding to cover transport expenses related to the impact of your disability, such as:
Funding to pay for everyday items and low risk/low cost products, like:
Name on NDIS portal – “Social, community and civic participation”. Covers cost to access and participate in the community, such as:
The capital supports budget pays for products to reduce the impact of your disability. These budgets are not very flexible and usually cover specific items which were discussed in your planning meeting and have been approved in your plan by the National Disability Insurance Agency.
Specialised technology or equipment, like a smart device, wheelchair, or app.
Funding for modifications to be made to your home to make it easier for to live your everyday life where your disability creates barriers. This may include modifications to your kitchen or bathroom equipment.
The capacity building supports budget is funding specifically allocated to assist you to build your skills and achieve your goals.
A support coordinator can be claimed from this budget. Support coordinators help you put your plan in action and organise your supports. They can assist you to build connections with the community and broader systems of support; develop and design support options to help you work towards your goals; and work with you to prepare for review and report on what you’ve achieved.
Name on NDIS portal – “CB Home Living”. This funding is for help for you to find suitable accommodation to live more independently, and could cover someone to assist you with inspecting properties or negotiating your contract. Supports may including assistance with applying for a rental property, meeting tenancy obligations and ensuring the home is appropriate for your needs.
Name on NDIS portal – “CB Social Community and Civic Participation”. This is to pay for support to help you build your skills in accessing the community. This may include funding a mentor or therapist to assist with learning skills for independence in the community.
This category of funding can be used to pay for tuition fees, art classes, sports coaching and similar activities that build skills and independence. You can use this category to pay for camps, classes and vacation activities that have capacity-building components. Activity based transport is also included.
Name on NDIS portal – “CB Employment”. Funding to support you to find a job and have assistance in your work. This budget can pay for a support worker to assist you at your job or helping you to find a job that’s right for you, including:
Name on NDIS portal – “CB Relationships”. Supports to help build your skills to connect and build relationships in your community. This could include funding to pay for someone to help you build your social skills or behavioural therapy services.
Name on NDIS portal – “CB Health and Wellbeing”. Services that improve your health and wellbeing, like a personal trainer, exercise physiologist or dietitian to improve your skills in maintain your own health and wellbeing.
Name on NDIS portal – “CB Lifelong Learning”. Access to services that will help you to transition from school to further education. This budget could fund a support worker to help you to go to university or TAFE.
Name on NDIS portal – “CB Choice and Control”. This budget pays for your plan manager.
Name on NDIS portal – “CB Daily Activity”. Funding to cover your therapies and other programs to build your capacity to reduce the impact of your disability. This could be a physiotherapist, speech pathology, OT or any other therapy that assists you to become more independent with your daily living tasks.
At My Plan Manager, we like to keep choice and control firmly in the hands of our clients, so we don’t usually recommend providers. But we do help clients to find all the information they need to make their own decisions about providers.
We also get asked by providers how they can best reach National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) participants to raise awareness of their businesses.
So we’ve put together a list of the NDIS provider directories where you might like to list your business so that NDIS participants can find you and learn about your services. Most of these offer a free listing option and are available to both registered and non-registered providers.
Kinora is My Plan Manager’s free online space for individuals, carers and family members to share experiences and explore ways to use NDIS funding to live their best possible lives. The great news is, we’ve recently opened Kinora up to proven and experienced service providers to drive for better life outcomes for those living with disability. Since then, we’ve had a number of experienced providers work with our team to showcase their services to our growing number of NDIS participants. These providers are leading the way to influence, steer and contribute to our community as subject matter experts, whilst working with us to connect and network with other like-minded providers to help NDIS clients achieve better outcomes.
My Plan Manager was recently recognised as a Top 10 AFR BOSS Most Innovative Company in 2021 for launching Kinora, which you can read about here. It’s a truly unique and sector-leading service to the disability community.
If you would like to get involved, click this link to register your interest, and someone from our team will contact you shortly.
Clickability offers free over the phone or email support to help people with a disability find providers in their local area. They feature ratings and reviews from people who actually use the services. People with disability, and their carers, can discover new services, connect with their peers, and provide feedback that others can then use to choose a service.
Disability Support Guide offers their free online directory Australia-wide. They are also a print and online publication about all things NDIS with a wealth of information. They offer multiple advertising options for providers with a wide audience reach through their printed publication DPS Guide to Disability Support and online through their news and informational arm, TalkingDisability.com.au.
Karista is a service that assesses client needs and helps match them with their ideal providers by comparing their services. Karista provides a number of pricing options for different levels of promotion, and a profile on their website will get you a detailed company listing showcasing locations and services. Karista lets clients leave reviews and can drive referrals to your business to attract new customers in a competitive market.
MyCareSpace is an easy-to-use search engine which lists both registered and unregistered providers. They can also assist people to find relevant services. They have nearly 50,000 people utilising their platform each month and offer multiple packages to suit the needs of all types and sizes of provider.
My Provider Directory is a straightforward directory with the ability to search by location for trusted top-rated NDIS Providers. The online directory has five tiers of paid sponsorship depending on the level of promotion you’re looking for.
FindMyNDIS is an accessible search engine with a range of different support services by location, listing both registered and unregistered providers. The website provides services visible to participants so that they are able to make an informed decision about which provider they want to choose. They will also generate leads for you for free or there are three levels of paid sponsorship to reach more participants.
The National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) can be really confusing, especially for people who haven’t had an NDIS plan yet. Once you break through the NDIS jargon and technical terms you will start to understand your plan, how to use your allocated budget and can unlock the potential of your plan to achieve your goals. Of course, your plan manager can also help you with this.
By Tina Kraja
This article is part of My Plan Manager’s guest blogger series.
I want to share how to budget. I hear stories from families who do not know how to share out their funding, saying things like, ‘we used it all in 3 months, there is nothing left’. This needs to change! Many people just do not understand how to budget the funds in their plans. Here are my tips for parents to plan ahead and get the most out of their child’s National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) plan.
I religiously budget down to that last dollar. I divide and conquer, quite literally. I take the full amount in my plan and I divide it by the hourly rate, so I know how many hours I have for a year. I then divide this by therapists, taking into account which therapist we will use fortnightly and who will be more beneficial to use weekly. This way I know exactly how many appointments to book for each therapist, so I get the most out of my plan without overspending.
I search for good therapists who are flexible to stretch my hours, for instance my physio and occupational therapist (OT) for my six-year-old both do 45 minute appointments, which saves us 30 minutes a week compared to having 1-hour appointments. This means we then get an extra hour a month to use on a weekend group session. Look out for those added extras, like travel charges. These can certainly eat into your funding, so have a look for providers that don’t charge for travel, or go to the office for appointments, as long as it won’t be too tiring for your child or too disruptive to their routine.
I study the school terms and see where our appointments fall. If we do weekly appointments, I might cancel week 10 as most kids finish early and have a fun day that Friday so OT is pointless this day. For speech therapy, my daughter will be so overwhelmed at the beginning of term 1 that weekly will be too much, but in term 2 and 3 she will be more settled, so more therapy is ok.
There are some other things you can consider to make every dollar go further. Some therapists hold appointments at the school and do not charge travel.
Weekend group sessions are cheaper with our Occupational Therapist, so they are a good option for both the budget and for extra social skills outside of school. We pay for an hour with both the OT and Physiotherapist.
Therapy tools can be purchased cheaply from retail giants like Kmart – just do some online research.
Visit the Special Education Resource Unit (SERU) and toy libraries for therapy tools also.
If you are finding that you’re still struggling to make your funds last you can ask your GP about a Medicare chronic disease management plan or mental health care plan. These can help cover part of the cost of therapy appointments – but they are separate to the NDIS, which means you may need to pay a gap yourself. You can find out more about chronic disease management plans or mental health care plans on the Department of Health website.
My Plan Manager also has some advice about keeping your plan in good health and what to do if you’re overspending.
Don’t let that money fester because you are on a waiting list, get on lots of lists, ask on social platforms. Use My Plan Manager to help you see the most used therapists and ensure you have continuity of therapy. We asked our school which organisations regularly visit, as we knew they were likely trusted in the industry.
Don’t be scared – be smart!
Tina is a mum of two girls: Miss 6, who is on the Autism Spectrum level 2 and also has Sensory Processing Disorder, severe phonological speech delay and severe anxiety, and Miss 8, who has severe anxiety and has recently been referred for an assessment. Tina loves numbers and is passionate about helping other families to get the most out of their NDIS plans. She is studying to be an individual disability support worker and is awaiting the world to return to normal so she can do some work experience and get her certificate 3. Tina has been a client of My Plan Manager for two years.