The world is a magical place, and your local community is rich with ideas, supports and potential connections for you to explore. That’s why the National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIA) has developed its Community Connections service – and you don’t have to be a National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) participant to benefit!
Delivered by Local Area Coordinators (LACs), Community Connections can link people with disability aged nine and older with mainstream and community supports. Remember, for children aged up to eight, there’s the NDIS Early Childhood Approach – and part of that is Early Connections, so Community Connections is for those who are aged from nine to 64 years.
If you’re at the start of your disability support journey, the service may be all the help you want and need from the NDIA right now, or you may also decide to ask your LAC for support with applying to join the Scheme.
For those who already have an NDIS plan, you can also access the Community Connections service by asking your LAC for more information about community and mainstream supports.
Community Connections draws on the wealth of local knowledge and experience that LACs have, and can link you with initiatives to help with:
Mainstream supports are generally available to everyone, and they’re usually funded by governments. They can include services for health, mental health, and education, as well as links to housing, transport or specialist support, like family violence services.
Health services may include things like doctors and general practices, community nurses, hospitals, vision, and hearing services. They can also include mental health services, counselling and dietetics.
Mainstream education can include schools, TAFE, university and community learning environments.
Community supports are available from local community organisations like local government authorities (councils), churches or religious groups, as well as hyper-local community groups. They can be great for boosting social connections and making friends through participation in everything from sports clubs and performing arts groups, through to collectives that come together to care for local nature areas.
Your LAC may also be able to connect you with peers who’ve experienced similar things to you, known as peer-to-peer support. Your peers not only understand what you’ve gone through, but they can also share their lived experiences and tips and tricks. It’s a great way to build up your confidence, knowledge and potentially ‘find your tribe’, whether in person or online. You could then choose to return the favour and share what you’ve learned with a new person linked to you as a peer via your LAC and Community Connections.
The first step is reaching out to your LAC – give them a call or visit their local office. You can find your closest LAC or office here – all you need to do is enter your post code.
Some rural and remote locations may not have a LAC. If that’s the case, contact the NDIA and ask to be put in touch with a Remote Community Connector.
Then, if you’d like to go on with Community Connections, you can arrange a time for an in-person, phone or video meeting. Your LAC will listen to you, your story, your needs and what you’d like to do. They’ll recommend supports available in the community that might be of interest to you and how these could help you with your goals.
Your LAC will ask you some general information about you and your life, your current needs and your future goals. Your goals are ideas, big and small, for how you see your life in the future. You can have one goal or many goals – there’s no right or wrong answer.
This information can be formalised in a written Community Connections plan, or it could be more of a casual conversation.
NOTE – To help, you might have someone who’s enquiring about Community Connections on your behalf. If this happens, the LAC will seek your consent before talking with them or providing them with any information about you.
If you choose, your LAC will then put together a Community Connections plan. This isn’t an NDIS plan, with its associated funding – however, it might include the same parts as an NDIS plan, like goals and a list of mainstream and community supports.
If you’d like to get a Community Connections plan, you’ll need to be comfortable providing your LAC with personal information about yourself, including your name and date of birth, and you’ll need to meet with the LAC as well. The plan will be useful if you like to map out your goals and receive information in writing, rather than one or two short phone calls.
There’s no obligation to do all or any of the things suggested in the plan and you don’t need to report back to your LAC.
If you don’t feel comfortable sharing personal information, the LAC won’t be able to create a Community Connections plan, but they will still share more general information with you.
The way you use Community Connections is very personal and it’s completely up to you.
You could get basic ideas about what’s available in your community without sharing many personal details about yourself, or you could meet with a LAC to formulate a more detailed Community Connections plan.
If you’re not yet an NDIS participant, but you’re thinking about applying, you could use your Community Connections plan as a springboard to applying to join the Scheme. Remember, to join the NDIS there are age and residency requirements, as well as eligibility about the way your disability impacts on your life. You can find out more here.
One of the places you’re always welcome to connect to is the Kinora community – My Plan Manager’s free, online community of like-minded people, including people with disability and professionals who work in the disability sector. Find answers to your questions and make connections anywhere, any time.
