According to the NDIS, goals are things that you want to pursue, and you may need support from the NDIS and other services to help you to do this. Your goals may include:
As your goals dictate what you can spend your NDIS funding on, it’s important to think about them carefully when setting them. They should be clear but they should also be focused on your development. Let’s imagine you only had one goal, for example:
I want to learn to cook spaghetti.
Learning to cook spaghetti may be something you want to do to increase your capacity and remain independent in your own home. But, if that is your only NDIS goal, then in theory, that would be the only thing you could spend your NDIS funding on: learning to cook spaghetti. This is why your NDIS goals shouldn’t be too specific, but they should have an element of learning (or capacity building) in them. For example:
I want to increase my capacity to remain independent and safe in my own home.
Now, let’s look at the original goal: I want to learn to cook spaghetti. What supports do you think you would need to achieve this? For example:
I require support to learn to cook spaghetti.
You may be able to stretch this out to include:
I require support to learn to cook healthy meals, and to use appliances safely and practically.
However, you are still really limited in what you can spend your funding on, whereas if the goal was, I would like to increase my capacity to remain independent and safe in my own home, the supports you may need could look more like:
Some of these supports may be funded through your NDIS plan (i.e. support workers) and some may be mainstream supports (i.e. attending a local Country Women’s Association to learn cooking skills). But, if your goals are well constructed, then you have a lot more flexibility with what you can spend your funding on.
Attending a cooking class could be considered reasonable and necessary use of your funding if your goal is to learn to cook spaghetti. But if your goal is to increase your capacity to remain independent and safe in your home, you can still attend the cooking class, and so many other options become available to you as well.
For example, you may want to focus on improving your budgeting and financial management skills first, so you can go to the shops knowing how much you have to spend and what you will spend it on. Later in your plan, you can then focus on how to cook the perfect spaghetti.
In short, your goals are a critical part of your plan. They help the NDIS determine where funding should be allocated for you, but importantly, well thought-out goals provide you with more flexibility when it comes to how you spend your funding.
Effective goal setting can take practice, and we encourage you to spend time thinking about this well before your first NDIS planning meeting and subsequent review. It’s a good idea to come to these meetings with a clear idea of your goals and the strategies you want to use to achieve them, to get better outcomes. And don’t forget, you can change your goals whenever you want.
Head to Kinora and post it up in the chat, and our coaches can work with you to see which supports would qualify as reasonable and necessary and which ones potentially wouldn’t.
Click here to register or log onto Kinora and ask our subject matter experts and coaches.
Getting you goals right can be the key to getting your plan right. Goals need to be general, flexible, and outcome-focused, which will ensure flexibility in the use of your funds to achieve those outcomes.
