Image of bright yellow sunglasses and beads

Getting NDIS ready is also about deciding how you want to manage your NDIS funds.

There are three ways to manage your NDIS funding. The National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIA) can help you manage payments to your providers, you can manage these payments yourself (Self Management) or you can have another provider (a Plan Manager) assist you. You can even mix them!

In your planning meeting we want you to be informed about your options so you can state clearly what you would like to happen.

We’re going to be dedicating some air time in the next while to the two options called Plan Management and Self Management.

Please note that at the time of publication the NDIA launched a new website. On the old website there were two documents that clearly described Plan Management and we cannot locate them on the new website despite a lot of looking!

So….. Here is a link to information published by the A.C.T Government about these choices.

Here is another run-down about it.

These three options for managing your funds continue to exist!

Plan Managers need to be registered providers, so you can find and engage with them once you receive your plan, and through other organisations and businesses which are now listing providers.

Lauren Hislop lives in the Hunter NSW NDIS site and tells us about using a registered Plan Management provider.

Photo of Lauren Hislop

Goals are a bit daunting important

A few years ago I was initially a bit daunted about the prospect of setting goals for my first NDIS plan. I thought, “what if I’m currently satisfied with my life?”   However, as I did some self exploration, I discovered that there were, in fact, areas of my life that I wanted to improve.

I considered questions (and you can too) such as;

“what do I want my life to look like?”

“what excites me?” and

“what would infuse my life with colour?”

I had to be open to the possibilities.

My advice to people planning their goals is not to be afraid to dream big. When I first wrote my goals I was afraid to dream big. I wasn’t sure what goals to list, and maybe you aren’t sure too. However, with encouragement from others I dared to state my desires.

One of my goals was and is to find work.

Obtaining employment is one of my greatest desires. Being equipped with three university degrees I assumed I would get a position. However due to structural barriers I have found it a struggle. Unfortunately my disability overshadows my skills.

Turning goals into reality

Once I had established what my goals were, I had to figure out how to implement them. My goals were a template for my life.

When I received my first NDIS plan, it appeared great on paper. However I had no idea how to use it. I consider myself intelligent and yet I couldn’t figure out how to take advantage of it. At that time, NDIA were paying my support providers directly. Unfortunately I began to feel nothing had changed from before NDIS. I had the same agency providing me with the same care, but I was wanted something different.

Infusing my plan and life with colour

Last year I decided to engage a plan manager to help manage my funds. I also had some Supports Co-ordination hours in my plan to help with these kinds of things as well. I chose a local organisation that don’t provide any other kinds of services. I really like their independence and their values. These are two important things to look out for in my opinion.

From the moment I engaged a plan manager my life began to infuse with colour. I cannot believe how my life has changed. I have a plan manager, who puts me at the forefront of making my own decisions. They check to see how I’m going. They have done things like:

help me recruit my own workers

keep track of my budget

pay and process invoices

problem-solve with providers

This is definitely the best choice for me. I feel like I’m actually living life! It is so good to know that you are in control without having to deal with the mundane bits. It has made the principles, such as choice, a voice and control a reality in my life.

Gaining skills and finding work

Because I plan manage, I can use different kinds of services and supports to achieve the goals in my plan. I can definitely use disability services if I want, but I can also think beyond these. Previously I thought I had to use disability support workers for everything. This is one of the benefits of plan management and self management. I can look to different people, businesses and organisations in my community to help me achieve my goals.

In my plan I have some funding to help me develop confidence in my ability to undertake paid work. This is the importance of thinking about goals, because if I didn’t state this as a goal, it might not have led to this funding.

One brilliant outcome is I have used this funding to improve my professional skills.

I am a researcher and writer and have been looking for work in this area. I have been writing for  different disability rights organisations. There is a lot of great opportunity here with a growing number of organisations valuing and paying people with disability to write. This got us talking about the online world, content marketing and social media marketing opportunities. My plan manager informed me I could use my funding to engage someone in this area to mentor and train me.

I was put in touch with Andrea, a small business marketing consultant. Her training definitely equipped me better, so when Libby asked me to work for InCharge in this area, I was ecstatic.  This training will also help me with future opportunities. It enhances my appeal to other organisations who would like to contract me. I cannot express how much economic participation means to me and other people with disabilities. We yearn to be productive.

Freedom in finding my own support workers

One of the greatest benefits I have from plan management is that it has helped me to recruit my own support workers. Initially I just had personal care for an hour each day to help me shower and dress. I had no idea I could use workers for accessing the community  and other things.

There has been great freedom in interviewing and choosing for myself. My worker is invaluable. She does things like takes me shopping, attends appointments with me, helps with filing and making calls because my speech is slurred, and acts like a personal assistant in work meetings. Having this assistance has allowed me to feel that I am a valued member in the community. I set the hours she works. I’m in control.

In my opinion we need to make the most of our plan. This will not only impact on us as individuals but on society as a whole. If we have support we can use our talents and skills to enhance society. Enjoy the journey!

Marianne Williamson wrote

“It is our light, not our darkness
That most frightens us.”

It’s time to let our light shine

They say there are 4 essential steps

1. Learn if you might be able to access the NDIS.
2. Think about your life now, your current informal and formal supports, and what is working and what might need to change.
3. Identify your strengths, interests, challenges and consider your goals or what you might want to achieve.
4. Write these things down and collect any reports, assessments or information you might find helpful for when the NDIS comes to you.

They have created a video and transcript about this, and have also confirmed elsewhere that thinking about your goals in your first plan is important.

In our work with people, however, we’ve discovered it is not always easy to do steps 2 and 3 and turn them into goals!

“Create a goal! Go on – it’s easy!”

This statement opens up an enthusiastic dialogue about how awesome goals are and why everyone going into the NDIS should go into their planning meetings equipped with goals that will change their lives for the better.

This exuberance is often fuelled by “write down your life story and everything will be hunky dory!”.  And besides, if you’ve been around disability services for long enough, you may have already told your life story to more people than you care to recall.

So. How do you turn a vague idea into a goal without opening up every corner of your life to yet another person you don’t know? Or – what is a straightforward resource that will help you to articulate the foundations of an actionable goal?

Introducing Talia

Talia, a fictional 25-year-old woman who lives with muscular dystrophy, has agreed to share her process with us. Mostly because we created her, but also because she cares about what happens to people going into the NDIS. She also said she’s happy to periodically cut our conversation off mid-stream to highlight the practical questions involved in creating a goal. So obliging!

Talia lives at home with her 18-year-old brother who is doing his final ever exams, and her Mum and Dad.

When we asked her about her goals, she paused for a moment before saying “I wish I knew. But how can I think about that when my support workers are never on time in the morning to help me get out of bed? It seems like it’s every second day that Mum has to help me instead. I’m 25 years old; I shouldn’t be this dependent on my Mum. She’s great – but yeah.”

Well these kinds of ideas are really helpful for thinking about a goal!

• “What is missing from your life?”

In Talia’s case, she is missing reliable support staff. As a result of this, she’s also missing out on having independence from her mother.

Throughout this piece, also bear in mind that these steps can be repeated for as many life areas as you deem important.

If you are looking for some help with what life areas you could think about, the NDIS Grassroots Discussion files also has an extensive list of resources, including pieces on life domains such as personal care, community inclusion, social/community support and employment support; as do WA’s Individualised Services (WAiS).

• “What would you like to change?”

Without going all Louise Hay on you, the answers to “What is missing?” need to be flipped to the positive. This is because goals literally can’t be created from what we *don’t* want – only from what we do want.

During this part of our conversation, Talia worked out that she wants reliable support staff and independence not only from her mother, but also from her family in general, who all provide her with a lot of support. And, although her family are close-knit, she just wanted the opportunity to be a daughter and sister instead.

These are the kinds of statements that can be worked with until they become less of a “wish list” and more of a “goal statement/s.” (Pardon the jargon!)

Talia had some difficulty with this next stage because, up until the NDIS, she’d had no choice but to become resigned to the status quo. How do you turn such experience and discontent into a goal statement?

• “What is stopping the missing things from happening?”

Talia said that the employees of her service provider were stopping her from receiving adequate personal care support, which was having a negative flow-on effect to her having independence from her Mum and family.

This conversation lead her nicely into the final step:

• “What would make a difference?”

Talia was stoked when it dawned on her that, with the NDIS, she could change service providers – or indeed, manage her own funds and hire her own support staff. She could even consider building her own team as a solution. She decided to ask for some mentoring assistance to learn how to properly manage and supervise support workers. And she wanted to learn from someone who was experienced in managing their own staff. She also decided to ask for a experienced person to review and create a recruitment process.

Her goal statement became:

“I want to live my life with maximum freedom, choice and enjoyment. An important part of this is having more reliable staff. I would like as little staff turn over as possible. I would like staff to turn up when I expect them to.”

So that was the beginning of Talia’s process.

Other people come at goal-setting from different angles; some are clearer on what they do want, which means they don’t have to spend as much (if any) time on Step 1. If you know what you want, you would just start from Step 3 – “What is stopping the missing things from happening?”.

And that, in a nutshell, is how to turn ideas into a goal.

To check out more resources about becoming #NDISReady as well as support for families and carers, have a browse of the NDIS Ready page (which has the nuts and bolts of what the NDIS provides for people with disability, families and carers).