It seems as though the ‘official word’ of the NDIA currently differs from what might happen in planning meetings with planners or LACs.

In short, how you hold onto the heart of the NDIS hasn’t changed, even though there might be funny bureaucratic things going on at the moment.

I have been working with a man and his family who live in a group home (they are going through first in NSW). His mother told me that she was told through her son’s service provider that the “NDIA will be managing people’s funds in group homes for the first year”. This was also mentioned when her son had his planning meeting.

When we had discussed this in pre-preparation work, I encouraged her to remember that there are still three choices in how funds are managed, and pointed out that they had thought about some exciting new things (particularly a Social Connector role) where some flexibility could be warranted. In this case, it might be good to self- or plan-manage part of the plan in order to achieve this more creatively.

So she put this to the planners in the meeting after they again said that the NDIA would be managing people’s funds! She told me that she’d said, “I told them I thought I had a choice and was told I do, and they will now enquire about that – so we will see what happens. They have taken all our documents, reports and quotes with them to go through.”

Of course, this is not a clear statement of YES, but it is better than not having said anything at all.

SO – please continue to ask, and make statements in your planning meetings supporting the choices that are still very much part of the heart of the NDIS. If you don’t ask or don’t say it, you may have missed out on something that could have happened.