Image of three girls fitting large blue puzzle pieces together.

This is a guest blog post from Cheryl McDonnell, a parent who has been through the NDIS process. Many thanks to Cheryl for these handy facts and tips!

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This is the sixth post in our blog series about some of the common confusions and inconsistencies we’ve heard from people coming out of NDIS planning meetings. We’ve been responding to some of these as they’ve come up. If you’ve heard anything else about the NDIS process that doesn’t sound quite right, please let us know!

Another confusion we’ve come across is around Plan Management and Supports Coordination.

To recap on what these things are, plan management is one of the three ways you can manage your NDIS funds. With plan management, you have the flexibility to pay for both registered and unregistered providers with your NDIS funds. Once your plan is approved, your Plan Manager (who will need to be NDIS registered) will deal with the financial and administrative side of your plan, and can do some service co-ordination tasks as well.

Plan management is great if you want more control over how your needs are met but you either don’t want to deal with the financial and administrative side of things, or the procedural decision around the float for self-managers (which is currently being challenged) makes self-management unviable.

Supports Coordination (or ‘Coordination of Supports’) is when someone helps you to implement your plan, to get started and find services and supports in your local community. If you receive supports co-ordination, it is a separately funded part of your Plan [within this link, do a search for ‘Coordination of Supports’].

The development of Supports Coordination is a construct developed by the NDIA. The role of Supports Coordination includes:

• Supporting implementation and identifying options for all supports in the plan, including informal, mainstream and community, as well as funded supports,
• Strengthening and enhancing people’s abilities to coordinate supports and participate in the community, reach decisions and develop agreements with support providers, and
• Building people’s capacity to achieve greater independence, self-direct supports in the longer term and understand funding flexibility.

What’s all this code for? Supports Coordination is far more than “just” case management. At a forum run by the NDIA in Sydney on 2 December, it was stated that Supports Co-ordination is about helping to put people’s desires for different outcomes into effect. It was also about looking beyond funded supports. Supports co-ordinators play critical roles in linking people to mainstream services and facilitating the acceptance of and engagement with those services and organisations.

More information about Supports Coordination can be found here.

Although there can be overlap between ‘plan management’ and ‘supports coordination’, you can also see that the two also have key differences.

We’ve heard that people are having difficulty in their first NDIS planning meeting because a question is being asked along the lines of ‘How do you want your plan managed?’ Then there is a list that includes both supports coordination and plan management, and you can only choose one of these options.

But what if you want a Plan Manager to help manage your NDIS funds AND you need supports coordination to help implement your Plan and work out what to spend those funds on?

Based on the direct experiences of people in their planning meetings, if this happens in your planning meeting, we suggest that you choose ‘supports coordination’, and then ask for ‘plan management’ to be noted in the comments or elsewhere as an additional request.

Why? Because the option to plan manage your NDIS funds is not subject to the ‘reasonable and necessary’ decision-making framework. Plan management is your legislated right as per Section 43 of the National Disability Insurance Scheme Act 2013 (unless you have ever been insolvent, which is the same if you want to self manage). Because Supports Coordination is subject to the ‘reasonable and necessary’ framework, you need to make sure you ask for it in your meeting, state why it is ‘reasonable and necessary’, and select Supports Coordination when asked ‘How do you want your plan managed?’ It is very important that these arguments as to why Supports Coordination is ‘reasonable and necessary’ are recorded appropriately in the main part of the data collection process, rather than just noted somewhere.

If you follow the above and your plan still comes back as ‘agency managed’ (this is actually happening to people), then you are less likely to need to request a Review, because plan management is not subject to the ‘reasonable and necessary’ framework. What you would need to do is get in touch with your NDIS planner or LAC and get this changed. If you don’t get a timely response, you would then need to follow the complaints process.

We hope this has been helpful. As always, if information you’ve heard from the NDIA contradicts anything we’ve written here, please leave a comment below or send us an email.

If you’d like to learn more about Supports Coordination, check out some of the services InCharge provides here.

This is the fourth post  in our confusion-clearing and myth-busting series about the NDIS. Thank you to everyone who’s provided feedback so far – keep it coming!

Here is another myth that has come through to us: People are being told that, if they choose self-management, they have to employ all their workers. Comments are also being made to people that make self-management seem the same as becoming an employer. Again, the implication here is that self-management is really hard work .

This is incorrect.

Yes, self-management offers flexibility in your funding to employ support workers yourself if that’s what you want to do. No, you don’t have to employ support workers yourself if that’s not what you want to do.

We’ve previously written about the practical benefits and current NDIS-related issues with self-managing your NDIS funds. In addition, you can also view information about self-management under the ‘Self-managing budgets in my NDIS plan’ module*.

Sometimes links to areas on the NDIA website don’t work as they should; the 404 error periodically appears when accessing information. If you’re having difficulty reaching any NDIA links we’ve posted in any of our blogs, please let us know. We’ve also contacted the NDIA about this, and we’ll let you know what’s going on when we find out.

Regarding self-management, every worker needs to be legally employed in Australia; they will either be employed by a service provider/you, or they will be self-employed.

There are three ways you can get the support staff you need, and we’ve added another. You’ll also find that the NDIA itself has published information about this, and we’ll point you in that direction as we go.

1)    Employ people yourself (also known as “Direct Employment”)

If you choose this option, you do employ support workers yourself. This means you become an employer – which means you have some legal responsibilities.

Some good places to start looking for information about this are Pearl Staffing Options and My Place.

More information about direct employment from the NDIA can be found at ‘Directly engaging my own staff’. ‘Mind the Gap: Disability Matters’ have also put out a great info sheet about direct employment that breaks the process down into manageable chunks, and explains each step of the direct employment process.

There are benefits to employing people yourself that make this option attractive to many people. One of the benefits is that you could make more savings between the rate that the NDIA pays, and the rate you pay your workers. This is because you don’t have to deal with ‘middle people’ – not because you pay workers less. These savings can mean that more direct support hours are available to you, or you possibly even have the option of hiring someone at a higher rate to do admin tasks (rostering, communicating with staff, organising team meetings, etc). This is just one of the ways that self-management (and plan-management, for that matter) offers more flexibility.

If you have Support Coordination funded in you NDIS Plan, you could also ask them to help you research information, and to link you in with people who have successfully self-managed their own NDIS funding. Alternatively, you may just want to learn more about this option to consider for your future NDIS plans.

InCharge has assisted people whose only experience of support workers was ‘being sent respite workers’ from a local agency. These people have subsequently explored, and taken up, direct employment of their own support staff. This is because we were able to support people through the process by moving through all the available options together, exploring the pros and cons of each, and then linking people in with information and resources.

What we can tell you is that if you do choose direct employment, although it can be daunting at the start, it is easy to maintain once you’ve got it up and going. But if you still don’t want to employ support workers directly, there are other ways you can self-manage your NDIS funds:

2)    Using support workers who are self-employed (also known as ‘independent contractors’)

The NDIA have summed this one up perfectly:

“A contract support worker operates similarly to most gardeners, cleaners and tradespeople, and has their own ABN and insurance and will provide you with an invoice to be paid.”

What you see here are examples of workers who supply their services to more than one client – or have started a small business because they intend to supply services to a number of clients.

When contracting support workers, there are important considerations to take into account. It’s not always straightforward whether a worker is an employee or contractor – just because they have an ABN and charge by the hour, this doesn’t necessarily make them a contractor. The Australian Tax Office (ATO) has a great video and easy questionnaire that can help you work out (a) whether your worker is an employee or contractor, and (b) the legal and financial implications of both of these. Pearl Staffing Options QLD also provides some good information around the difference between employees and contractors.

If there’s anything you’re unsure about, it’s best to contact the ATO directly.

Using independent contractors can be a great option as well: The contractor might advertise their fees, and you can decide whether you think these fees are reasonable. Some contractors might be willing to negotiate their fees, and they won’t necessarily charge higher on weekends or of a nighttime.

One of the reasons people choose this option is because, like direct employment, there is no ‘middle person/organisation’ between you and the support worker – which means that you can potentially make savings on your funding with this option as well.

3)    Through a support provider of your choice

Of course, you may still be able to find support workers through a service provider who has support workers ‘on their books’. In this case, the service provider is their employer.

The NDIA has said that:

“You can use any service provider you want to use. If a service provider or agency you want to use is registered with the NDIA, you can still self-manage your NDIS Budget and use their services.

In this instance, the registered service provider will provide you with an invoice to be paid rather than accessing your funds directly through the NDIS Portal.”

As with each option, this option has its pros and cons. The obvious advantage is that the support provider would take care of all the legal responsibilities of employment. In addition, they may also have a ready pool of support workers – and some providers may also be okay with employing people you find.

There are also new kinds of providers that also promote peer to peer connection.

The cons of this option are that, under the NDIS, the provider might claim the full NDIS payment rate from your NDIS Plan. This may mean you don’t make the savings we mentioned in the first two options that might enable you to get more support hours, etc. This may or may not be important to you. The provider may also have rules around using their workers – even ones you find – so it’s important that you have and understand a service agreement with said provider.

Finally, we wanted to touch on some of the new, online ways people are finding their support workers.

4)    Connecting, searching and finding support workers online

Our fourth option is really to help you to understand some of the new, online platforms being developed. You can use any of these platforms when you self-manage your NDIS funds. New online platforms give you a pool of potential workers to look at and engage with, and these workers can be employed in the ways we’ve talked about in this post.

Newer online organisations such as HireUp (an employer) and Better Caring (a platform that connects you with self-employed workers) are essentially the Gumtree of disability services: People with disability and support workers can sign up, provide their details and effectively cut out the ‘middle man’ when choosing their own staff.

These are by no means the only choices. A quick online search comes up with other options as well, and we always encourage people to research and decide on what is a right fit for them.

There are also state-specific as well as national Facebook groups set up and run by peers for the same purpose, such as Australian People with Disabilities and Support Workers Connections and WA Families and Disability Support Workers Network.

Online organisations give people the flexibility of choosing their own staff while the organisation provides administrative support; whereas peer-run groups give people the opportunity to meet and hire people at a grassroots level. There are also groups of people who get together to share information about how and where to find good support – this is called Peer Support to Buy Support. Two organisations we’re aware of are VALID (Victoria) and CDAH (Newcastle, NSW). Again, we encourage you to do your own research and make the best decision for you.

SUMMARY: You can employ all your support workers yourself, but you don’t have to. There are three ways the NDIA suggests you can find staff, and we’ve suggested an extra way. You might also want a mix of employees and contractors.

What all this means is that, when you self-manage your funds, there are many ways you can get support while maximising your freedom.

This blog post has come about after receiving this question via the InCharge website:

‘I’m just wondering if we go with an agency to manage the funding for our plan for the first year, will it be possible to change agencies or even decide to self manage after that initial year? Will the NDIA policy allow us to do that or do we have to stay with the same agency indefinitely and never be able to self manage after being locked into one agency.’

We figured that many people would have the same, or similar, questions. So here’s our response.

First of all, it’s important to know that when we talk about ‘Agency’ and ‘Agency Managed’, we are referring to the National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIA).

‘Service providers’ are the professionals that the ‘Agency’ will manage payments for.

There are four ways you can manage your NDIS funds:

• Self-management (you pay service providers with your NDIS funds)
• Plan-management (a plan manager pays service providers with your NDIS funds)
• Agency-management (the NDIA pays service providers with your NDIS funds)
• A combination of these options (you pay some service providers for some things, and/or a plan manager and/or the NDIA pays other service providers for other things.)

If you choose to have the NDIA manage your funds in the first year, you can absolutely change in the second year – and after that as well. During the first year of your plan, you can use your funds to engage any registered service providers* you wish, and you can also switch to use other registered service providers if you want to. Sometimes they might request notice of this, and so you should check their service agreement thoroughly.

*A registered service provider is registered with the NDIA to provide services for NDIS participants.

If you want to try self-management, we suggest a couple of things:

• You could try self-managing a small or manageable part of your plan in the first year, in order to gain experience so that you can potentially self-manage more of your plan in the second year. You can also ask for some assistance to learn how to do it; you might be provided with some hours for training and support, so that you can engage someone in your first year to provide more information and assistance. This is called Supports Coordination. InCharge provides Supports Coordination, and you can find out more here.
• You could also try Plan Management, which provides someone to assist with the financial side of things. Plan Management has many of the same benefits as self-management.

You will need to ask for these in your planning meeting. We cannot guarantee what the NDIA will decide, but we always recommend asking. For more information about some common terms used by the NDIA, check out our recent post about Supports Coordination, LACs and Plan Management.

If you’ve already been to your NDIS planning meeting and are self- or plan-managing part or all of your funds, how are you finding it so far?

An image of a love heart lodged between two branches

In this piece I hope to provide a run down of what it looks like we can expect from the NSW NDIS planning process. And some suggestions for how to make the most of the process.

It is taken from direct experience, information sessions where National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIA) representatives have spoken, and feedback from people who have already had a planning meeting.

If you have further information that you think should be shared, please be in touch as I am doing my very best to share correct information.

The transition to full scheme starts on July 1 2016. By July 2019, it is estimated that 141,957 people will transition to the NDIS in NSW.

The ‘rollout’ of NDIS in NSW is starting with people who currently receive government supports. The first groups moving to the NDIS will be those people living in large residential centres, group homes, hostels and receiving in-home support.

Image of order of how people will enter the scheme in NSW

It appears planning meetings have already started for some people in these first ‘categories’.

What happens for people not currently receiving supports is a very good question! I attended an NDIS meeting on the 31st May, where an NDIA representative said that they were looking at 6,000 new people entering the scheme in the first year, but that there was still no agreement on how those 6000 people will be prioritised.

We encourage people to test access to the Scheme regardless, and fill out the forms after July 1. Don’t sit in wonder or in hearsay from others. Test eligibility for yourself.

This is especially the case for those people who are nearing 65 years old.

Some initial information to look out for

The process for my brother (and confirmed with other people) has been to receive two letters and then phone calls.

One letter is the from NSW Ageing Disability and Homecare (what we call ADHC) and one is from the NDIA (Remember the NDIA is the Agency in charge of implementing the NDIS)

These letters basically say ‘we know you exist and we will be in touch with you’.

Please pay attention to letters!

Then there is a phone call from the NDIA asking you some questions.

I understand this is a call from the NDIA Access team, with questions to check access, understanding they are joining the NDIS, and gather information for the planning process and are not over-the-phone eligibility questions (taken from an NDIA representative at a meeting on the 31st May hosted by National Disability Services (NDS))

Then there is a call to organise the planning meeting with you.

What happens if this has not happened for you yet? Don’t panic. It’s probably that you are further down on the ‘phase in’ plan.

The NDIS ‘Pathway’

The NDIA has produced this information about what the process is for becoming a participant in the Scheme.

In this information, the words My First Plan are used. This hasn’t been used before in NDIS trial sites (For some analysis on My First Plan, you can read here and here).

Who are the ‘representatives’ you are likely to meet?

Two organisations in NSW have been contracted to provide something called Local Area Co-ordination (LAC). They are Uniting and St Vinnies.

The LACs have a big role to play in planning. They are not NDIA employees, but it appears their role is to collect the information necessary for a plan to be created by the NDIA.

Depending on answers to questions in your access phone call, it may mean you end up meeting with an LAC at your planning meeting, and not an NDIA Planner. My understanding is that people who have more complex needs are allocated an NDIA Planner.

A photo of a slide explaining the Local Area Coordination function

The meetings look to be around 90 minutes and move through a series of questions.

Feedback about these questions are that they involve asking about the details of a person’s day, and what supports they need during different times of the day.

The LAC role is to conduct information gathering on behalf of NDIA  only. They ask the person and/or their nominee a set of questions which will inform their NDIS plan. This information is sent to NDIA to develop a plan for the person.

As the slide above indicates, a large number of people will then see an LAC again to assist with implementation of their plan.

Doing all we can for our First Plan

OK, so how can we take maximum control of this process?

The heart of the NDIS has not changed

Thinking about your goals and reasonable and necessary supports to achieve these goals are still entirely relevant.

Here is some recent information on Reasonable and Necessary.

Here is information on what the NDIS will fund.

The process the NDIA outlines on page 12 of their pathway documention, is actually a good set of questions to get started with.

We must take this ‘heart’ in to our planning meeting.

Being prepared

As meetings are relatively short, it is important to do some thinking before hand.

My own experience and feedback from others has been “thank goodness we created a document and did our thinking beforehand, or we would never have thought of it all in the time”.

Getting some things down on paper means that you may feel shaky but your voice is strong. Be confident in your goals for yourself.

It also seems that the emphasis in meetings is on documenting what people already receive.

While this is very important, it is also equally important to think about any areas of unmet need:

• take care to make sure you discuss all services you have received. Some things are ‘block funded’, some things appear just to have been provided for free. But these will all need to be funded now if they are to continue. For example, you may go out with friends, but is this funded and supported through an organisation? If you didn’t get this support, would you still be able to go out with these friends?
• are there things you think are missing in your life?
• are there times you don’t have supports during the week and specific times in a year?
• times when you are receiving family support and this is not a reasonable level of informal support (especially if you are an adult and your parents are supporting you a lot)
• things you would like to change
• what is stopping these things from happening and how could NDIS funding assist?
• new things you want to learn and do

Here are some ideas from one of our Facebook posts that might give you some more ideas in this area.

It also seems clear, that we cannot expect or rely on the process to bring these things forward. We must name them.

It is also important to think about whether you will need help to implement your plan, find services and supports in your community, help to be included and get your goals achieved. This is called Supports Co-ordination. It is important to develop your own view  – based on your goals, the things you want to achieve, your life circumstance, the skills you have and the people in your life – about how much help you may need to implement your plan.

The NDIA defines this as

“Assistance to strengthen participants’ abilities to coordinate and implement supports and participate more fully in the community. It can include  initial  assistance  with  linking  participants  with  the  right  providers  to  meet  their  needs, assistance to source providers, coordinating a range of supports both funded and mainstream and building   on   informal   supports,   resolving   points   of   crisis,   parenting   training   and   developing participant resilience in their own network and community.”

You can read more about Supports Co-ordination in the latest Price Guide for your state. We will be producing more information on this as well.

A peer-developed resource to help people with planning is in the Files section of the NDIS Grassroots Discussion Facebook page.

Here is a link to our last webinar and information booklet on this topic.

InCharge is assisting people to get ready. We are happy to share our processes with anyone who is in a position to assist people get ready. We have been working with carers’ groups, individuals directly, small groups of people and service providers. We have seen the positive results of our processes in NDIS planning meetings. Contact us to learn more at hello@incharge.net.au

Think about how you want your NDIS funding managed

It is equally important to have done some thinking about how you want your NDIS funding managed.

Remember there are 3 options and you can mix these.

1. Agency Managed.
2. Self Managed
3. Plan Managed.

There is a lot of misinformation about self management and plan management. Self management doesn’t mean doing it all on your own and you can ask for assistance to learn the skills to self manage better. A plan manager and a Supports Co-ordinator are ways that you can have a partner to help you self manage. Again, please contact us to learn more about these.

Here is a link to some Plain and Easy English information on these choices.

Here is some more information on self management.

A plan manager can help you feel more confident to be in control by assisting you with managing your finances and getting your plan up and running as well.

Becoming more self sufficient is at the heart of the scheme. Self management or plan management could allow for more creativity and flexibility in how you can get the goals of your plan met.

Even if you do not get asked about this, it is your right to speak to these funding management choices in your planning meeting. There is a danger this may be decided for you without adequate discussion.

 Tips for the meeting

• Having a face to face meeting is very important and I encourage you to insist on this (just in case there might be pressure for a phone meeting or an unsuitable meeting being insisted upon)
• If it takes you longer to speak for yourself, I encourage you to stick with that and to ask that the meeting is long enough for you
• I encourage you to organise the meeting so that your family member with disability is present if a meeting is something that they could participate in, given the right structure. In this context, it could become easier for a planning meeting to happen without the presence of the participant!
• Where is the best place for the meeting to take place so that the participant can be included? Ask for this.
• Who else can participate and be present in the meeting to support and add voice?
• The meetings appear to be ‘paperless’ but I have asked about people bringing pre-prepared information, and have been told this can be accepted.  However, in practice, knowledge of this could differ from LAC to LAC (or planner to planner). So I encourage you to ask.  I encourage you to ask for the name/s of the LACs or planners, the office they come from, and an email address that you can send your documentation to and how you should “Attention” it.

But also remember

I have never felt that an NDIS will come as a fully-formed utopia that lands in our laps.

Change doesn’t come from the top down.

Any great change I have ever witnessed has happened from the grassroots, where people see a reform as an opening and an opportunity for them to grasp and shape as a way to better their own lives.

We must remain vigilant and not feel pressured into accepting things that really do not feel right. Often when we are faced with authority me may feel we have to agree to things in a rush.

Remember the heart of the NDIS has not changed.

Remember the insurance (not welfare) approach still stands.

Remember the capacity building opportunities to move beyond ‘same same’ are there to be asked if we want them.

Remember we can learn about these in Year 1 of our plan, and so be more ready for Year 2.

Remember we will still have choice of providers once we get our plans.

Remember that there is a complaints process for the NDIS.

I look forward to sharing with you the lessons learned from my brother’s planning meeting, which looks like it may happen soon.

There are many groups of people that it is very clear are at a heightened disadvantage in relation to this process. This keeps me awake at night. If you are in a position to use this information, and to research other relevant information, to assist people feel more ready, I really encourage you to step forward in any way you can.

– Libby.