NDIS PLAN MANAGEMENT

Like a trusted friend, our NDIS Plan Managers are here to help you navigate + maximise your NDIS Plan!

Our team are real people from real walks of life.  We care about you, helping achieve your goals + aspirations!

OUR AREAS OF EXPERTISE INCLUDE:

NDIS Plan Management

What Is An NDIS Plan?

The NDIS provides funding to Australian citizens, residents and permanent or special visa holders with a permanent and significant disability to access reasonable and necessary supports and services they need to live and enjoy their life.  The funding is provided in the form of an “NDIS Plan” which outlines the goals of the NDIS Participant.  The funding is to assist in achieving the goals.

An NDIS Plan identifies that the person requires assistance to support their independence and social and economic participation.  NDIS Participants use their funding to purchase reasonable and necessary supports and services that will help them to achieve their goals.

In the NDIS, support for participants falls into three Support Purpose categories:

  1. Core Supports
  2. Capacity Building Supports
  3. Capital Supports

Core Supports enable an NDIS Participant to engage in or complete daily living activities, or social, community or economic participation activities which enables them to work towards their goals and to meet their objectives.

Capacity Building Supports enable NDIS Participants to build their independence and their skills to work towards their goals.

Capital Supports are higher cost items, such as assistive technologies, equipment and vehicle or home modifications, including Specialist Disability Accommodation.  When included in an NDIS Participants plan, many capital items are specifically identified.

How Much Does The NDIS Pay?

The National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIA) is an independent statutory agency, and the role of the National Disability Insurance Agency is to implement the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) and along with the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission, oversee the implementation and compliance of the scheme.

It is important to understand that the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) is in fact, just that – an insurance scheme to assist people with disability to connect and receive the supports they need to build and improve their skills and independence.  The funding that is provided to participants in the form of an NDIS Plan is tailored to the requirements of the NDIS participant based on their disability(ies) and goals.

The National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIA) regularly update pricing arrangements to ensure that NDIS Participants receive value for money in the supports that they are receiving.

 

What Can NDIS Funds Be Used For?

NDIS Funds can be used for many supports, as long as the support aligns with the disability(ies) the NDIS Participant has been funded for, and the goals set out in their NDIS Plan.

The types of support the NDIS may fund for NDIS Participants include:

  • Assistance with daily personal activities;
  • Assistance with social, economic and community participation;
  • Help with household tasks to allow the participant to maintain their home environment;
  • Skill development to manage an NDIS Plan;
  • A contribution to transport costs to enable access to supports outside of the home environment to achieve their goals;
  • Workplace assistance to successfully get or keep employment in the open or support labour market;
  • Therapeutic supports, including behavioural support;
  • Assistive and adapted technology;
  • Assessment and assistance by skilled personnel to identify, set up and/or training in the use of aids and equipment, home modification design and construction;
  • Mobility equipment; and
  • Vehicle modification

How To Spend NDIS Funding?

If we are lucky enough to have you as one of our Canny Plan Management clients, we take the time to go through your NDIS Plan with you, so we can complete an initial budget breakdown each time you have a new NDIS Plan approved.  The funding breakdown budgets are flexible based on the needs of your funded disability(ies) and your goals.

Having a budget breakdown helps to provide a view of what is needed to allocate the required hours, frequency, payment rate and total overall amount to the NDIS Participants Core, Capacity Building and Capital Supports as well as what is included in each of those categories.

It also depends on how your NDIS Plan is managed as to how you can spend your NDIS Funding.  Want to know more on NDIS Plan Management -VS- Self Management as well as Help To Manage Your NDIS Plan?  We’ve got everything you need on both!

It’s important to remember that the NDIS Funding you are allocated can only be used for reasonable and necessary supports that are not specific supports as well as not:

  • The responsibility of another government system (e.g. medical help) or community services; 
  • Related to an NDIS Participant’s unfunded disability(ies); and
  • Day-to-Day living costs or everyday items, including household items that are not related to an NDIS Participant’s funded disabilities and the goals in their NDIS Plan.

Canny Plan Management + Help With NDIS Funds

Canny Plan Management are real people from real walks of life.

Our team have experience and expertise in the disability sector.  We care about you and helping you in achieving your goals and aspirations.  Trust, expertise and understanding are what you want to be looking for when it comes to working with a registered NDIS Plan Management team.

Canny Plan Management offers a personal NDIS Plan Manager, dedicated to helping you understand and manage your NDIS Plan.  Get in touch with our team to have a chat and ask us the questions that you have to see if we will be a good fit to form part of your support network.

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Your NDIS Plan Management Dictionary

Written by: Edwina Wilkens l Marketing + Business Development Manager for Canny Plan Management

When it comes to checking the spelling of a word you’re not too sure about, you don’t go to the dictionary – you go to your mum!  When you’re sitting there blankly because someone has just dropped a word that you have no idea what it means even when used in context, you call your mum to find out what on earth they were talking about.  When it comes to the National Disability Insurance Scheme, commonly known as the NDIS, it’s no different.  You still turn to your mum for a little bit of help.  We want you to understand completely and not have any doubt in your mind when it comes to the NDIS, introducing; Your NDIS Dictionary – NDIS Plan Management l Canny Group.

Think of Canny Plan Management as being that person for you, the person that you go to for help when it comes to your NDIS Plan and ensuring that you have the best supports in place for you to help you reach and achieve your goals.

Understanding the NDIS can be a little the same as facing your fears of spiders – scary, and just simply – not going to happen unless your mum is there to deal with the “the situation”.  Life is complicated enough – right!?  We wanted to help to ensure that when it comes to the NDIS that you understand as much as possible, so we have put together some of the top used terms to make sure that you are on the right path!

Here are some of the most used NDIS terms that we will take you through;

  1. Plan Management
  2. LAC
  3. Informal Supports
  4. Goals
  5. Plan Review
  6. Service Booking
  7. Service Agreement
  8. Support Categories
  9. Choice & Control
  10. Reasonable & Necessary

Manage Your Plan: Plan Management

(Canny) Plan Management

One of three ways that you can have your NDIS Plan Managed (as well as self-managed and agency-managed, or a combination of the three!)

NDIS Plan Management gives you the freedom of choosing unregistered providers as well as registered providers which is the same as self-management however you get the bonus prize of not having to keep records and receipts (because when you are plan managed by Canny Plan Management your chosen registered NDIS Plan Management provider – we do it all for you) unlike being agency managed which means you need to keep all documentation of records and receipts.

LAC + Other Support Workers

LAC (Local Area Coordinator)

When it comes to building your plan and putting the pieces of it together with you, there can be three important people that will be part of this process;

  1. LAC (Local Area Coordinator)
  2. ECEO (Early Childhood Early Intervention) Practitioner *if applicable
  3. NDIS Planner

It is a mixture of the above important people that are not only help you to build your plan but also agree to your goals as well as the budgets set out in your plan to make sure that they work for you.

NDIS Management Help with Informal Supports

This is support that is seen as the support a person with a disability is already receiving from family and friends.  The informal support provided by parents, brothers and sisters and other family members is vitally important to people with disabilities – just as it is for you and me!

In addition to the supports that are already being provided, the close relationships that NDIS participants have with the people who provide this informal support can also be highly important as these are the people that participants know and trust.

Your LAC, ECEI or NDIS Planner will consider all the informal supports you already have in place during your Plan Review – for example, your parents may already take you to do your grocery shopping on a weekly basis.

Setting + Managing Your NDIS Goals

Everyone has goals in life – for people with disabilities, this is no different.  Your NDIS Plan will include some goals that you have set out and agreed that you would like to work towards to achieve during the lifetime of your NDIS Plan.

The goals will are specific and personal to you and your disability and they may not be and don’t have to be related to each other.  For example;

GOAL ONE // “I want to learn how to prepare for a job interview and to improve my resume writing skills, so I can apply to get a job by myself”

GOAL TWO // “I would like to be able to get the bus to school on my own without support”

Plan Review

When you and a LAC, ECEI or NDIS Planner meet to discuss what you want and need to be included in your next plan as well as the goals you want to set out to achieve and how you’re going to achieve them.

Plan Reviews can be scheduled, generally towards the end of your current plan or unscheduled like smack bang in the middle of your plan if it happens to be that your situation or needs have changed.  Your Plan Review is the time when you can choose to have your plan as NDIS Plan Managed – like with Canny Plan Management!

Canny Plan Management make it easy for you when it comes to your plan review as we are able to help you prepare for this meeting, by providing you with financial reports on your funding from your current plan to see how they tracked over the course of its lifetime.  Being able to show and have evidence that you needed extra funding to be able to reach your goals or perhaps it was that you didn’t spend all of the allocated funding because your goals were reached!

Either way, we are here to help you be prepared and prepare you for your NDIS Plan Review

Service Agreement

When you come on board with Canny Plan Management, you sign a service agreement which is a document between you and us as your registered NDIS Plan Management team.  It is a document where you agree to the service that we are providing to you.

Generally, you will have service agreements between yourself and each of your providers that state what services they are going to be providing to you as well as how much it will cost you.

These are useful documents so both parties know what is expected of each other and there is no confusion from the get go!

Service Booking For Your NDIS Plan

A Service Booking relates back to your signed service agreement that you have with your chosen providers.  Service Bookings are used to set aside funding from your plan for the service agreements for services to be provided over the lifetime of your NDIS plan.

With Canny Plan Management as your registered NDIS Plan Management provider, we will make a service booking on the portal on your behalf, which allows us as your plan manager to claim payment from the NDIS for all services and supports that have been approved in your plan.  Put simply, it allows us to be able to pay your invoices for you and monitor your spending.

Help To Manage Your Funding Through Your Support Categories

Your NDIS budget will be split into Support Categories.  You can use your funds within each support category on specific services or line items.

Supports and services for NDIS participants fall into three categories: core, capital and capacity building.

  • CORE; a support that helps a participant complete daily living activities
  • CAPITAL; a support for an investment, such as assistive technologies, equipment and home or vehicle modifications, or funding for capital costs (to pay for Specialist Disability Accommodation for example)
  • CAPACITY BUILDING; a support that helps a participant build their independence and skills

Supports and services that are delivered for the participants that have been approved for NDIS funding are there to help with who have disabilities have the same thing in life as every other person living without a disability.  For example, somewhere to live, a job, hobbies and the company of family and friends.

NDIS Participant has Choice + Control

A key term that you will hear frequently that puts you in control for the supports that you receive.  It means that you can have as much of an input as you want over who, how, when and what supports you receive.

As per the Overview of the NDIS Operational Guideline; People with a disability have the same right as every other member of the Australian society to be able to determine their own best interests, including the right to exercise choice and control, and to engage as equal partners in decisions that will affect their lives, to the full extent of their capacity (section 4(8)).

Reasonable + Necessary NDIS Budgets

When an NDIS Planner, LAC or ECEI is helping to build your plan with you, the supports that are funded will be deemed ‘reasonable and necessary’ to your individual situation.  They will assess whether a support is:

  • Related to your disability
  • Value for money
  • Likely to be effective in helping you to reach your goals in your plan

What is considered reasonable and necessary for one NDIS participant, may not be considered for another.  This is because each person with a disability is not the same and the goals that they are working towards are personalised to the individual.  During your planning session, we recommend that you have a conversation with your NDIS Planner as to why you feel you need the supports you are requesting and specifically how they will assist you in reaching your goals.

National Disability Insurance Agency help, via Canny Plan Management

Every day the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) is changing and improving to better the lives for people living with disabilities.  Canny Group have been helping to assist our community for over 61 years now and with the introduction of Canny Plan Management, we wanted to ensure that we were helping every person within our community, with or without a disability.

We are proud to put the participant first and base our services around their wants and needs.

Get in touch today to find out how Canny Plan Management can be your NDIS Plan Management providers to let you get back to reaching and achieving your goals.

Picture of Edwina Wilkens, Marketing and Business Development Manager in the centre of the picture with her hands on her hips leaning forward and smiling wearing a striped purple and yellow shirt