Short Term Accommodation (STA) unpacked

At My Plan Manager, we get lots of questions about what Short Term Accommodation (STA) is, how to access it, and when you can and can’t use it. Here’s our STA guide to help explain what it’s all about.

What’s STA?

STA is accommodation at a different place to your usual home. You can access STA funding (in the right circumstances) for up to 14 days at a time, for a total of 28 days per year.

STA can be used for a short stay away from home, to make new friends, develop new skills or try new things. It can also be used for respite, which can help participants and their informal supports take a break, with the aim of maintaining current living arrangements.

In this article we cover:

• what STA includes and what it can look like
• when you can and can’t use it
• how you can get it
• how to find an STA provider

What STA includes

Despite the name, STA isn’t just about the accommodation, it also involves the support you receive while staying there, including personal care, food and activities that you and the STA provider agree to. Depending on the provider, activities may include art therapy sessions, group fitness activities, day trips and more.

While STA services are often provided in a group-based facility, some organisations provide STA as additional support in a participant’s home. In some cases, the provider may book an apartment or accommodation at a hotel.

Examples of STA could be:

• Someone with high support needs, whose informal supports (like a family member) need a break (respite care). This helps to sustain the informal supports.
• Someone who wants to build their independence, and time away from their usual support network lets them work on their skills in a new environment.
• A young person with goals around increasing their community participation, who would benefit from attending a school holiday camp. This may also benefit their informal supports, who may need to work during the school holidays.

When you can and can’t use STA

The NDIS may fund STA if it:

• means your family or informal supports can support you for longer
• means you may not need as much support in the future
• helps you maintain functional capacity
• helps you increase independence
• helps you to do more activities

The NDIS doesn’t typically fund STA if it:

• exceeds 14 days in a row, or a total of 28 days per year
• isn’t for the purposes STA is meant for

You can find out more about the NDIS STA guideline here.

How to get STA funded

If STA isn’t stated in your NDIS plan, but you have funding available in your Core Supports budget, you may be able to use it to cover STA – if it ticks the boxes in the NDIA’s reasonable and necessary funding criteria. In short, that criteria states that the purchased support (in this case, STA) must relate to your disability, provide value for money, and be effective and beneficial.

There are standard rates for STA in the NDIS Pricing Arrangements and Price Limits and generally funding is for a group price, which means you may share supports with other people unless you need individual support because of your disability.

The NDIS can fund up to 28 days of STA per calendar year, which can be used flexibly – but you can’t claim more than 14 days in a row. If you want to access more than that, you’ll need approval from the National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIA).

How to find an STA provider

There are lots of specialised STA providers, ranging from small homes to larger, hotel-style facilities. The services and supports they offer can be very different, so it’s important you take your time to research what’s available and which STA providers meet your support needs.

If you have a plan manager, you can use non-registered STA providers, but often these options don’t deliver the value you’re after because they don’t include supports – meaning you’ll need to pay extra for those. Be sure you take this into account when you’re comparing prices.

Remember, the NDIA looks at value for money, so if you wanted to use non-registered accommodation, like a hotel, you’d need to be able to show that the level of accommodation you’ve chosen is required for your situation. It may be difficult to explain why a five-star resort is required – and using a lot of your funding for accommodation would have a significant impact on your budget.

The best and easiest way to use your NDIS funding for STA is with a specialist provider that provides all your accommodation, personal care, meals, and activities. However, you can claim these items separately for the period you’re staying in STA (so, you can source them from more than one provider) if they’re within the NDIS Pricing Arrangements and Price Limits.

Accommodation for support workers can also be covered under STA. However, if you instead have your informal supports staying with you – people like parents, siblings or friends – you can only claim your share of the accommodation.

STA is not intended for holidays and accessing it with NDIS funding means it must relate to your disability. If you believe the support is reasonable and necessary and it will help you to achieve your goals, it’s a good idea to have some supporting information that backs that up, just in case you need to show the NDIA why you spent your funds that way.

We’re here to help

If you’re not sure what’s funded under STA, or if you can access it, just ask us. You can email us at [email protected] or call us on 1800 861 272 from 8am-6pm (SA time), Monday to Friday.