The National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) is Australia’s first national Scheme for people with disability. It moves away from the previous system of providing block funding to agencies and community organisations, to direct funding for individuals.
The NDIS is a federally managed and funded safety net, providing a nationally-consistent, lifetime commitment to people who have permanent and significant disability with funding for supports and services.
The NDIS is not welfare, it is an insurance-based scheme that invests in participants to improve long-term outcomes.
The NDIA is an independent Commonwealth government agency responsible for overseeing the implementation of the NDIS.
Put simply, anything you request that doesn’t meet reasonable and necessary criteria set by the National Disability Insurance Scheme Act (2013) will not be funded.
Supports must meet all of the following criteria:
This is in the legislation (NDIS Act) and is a guiding tool for planners. So, remember to use this is a checklist for all your requests and use this language when you are pre-planning!
For example:
When thinking about supports you need for your plan you can apply the ordinary life principle e.g. ‘I’m 37, do other 37 year olds have to be showered daily or driven to work or their medical appointments by their Mother?’ If the answer is no, then it is often reasonable to ask for supports to cover these areas as long as they meet the ‘reasonable and necessary’ criteria.
The price guide sets a price by the NDIS for supports offered under NDIS. It determines what a service provider can charge for supports, much like a Medicare line item.
Some people find it helpful to look through to better understand the breadth of supports available. However, it isn’t an exhaustive list as it doesn’t cover every single item.
For more information visit the price guide pages on the NDIS website.
Pre-planning is all the preparation work you put in before your planning meeting. It can involve:
Goals describe what you want to achieve, develop or learn. A key part of your plan is identifying short-term and long-term goals. Usually there are two goals in a plan. A short term goal is something you can achieve in 12 months, a long term goals might take a few years.
Goals are one of the most important parts of your plan. This is because all the supports funded in your NDIS plan should directly link back to helping you achieve your goals. For this reason, it is recommended that your goals should be fairly broad so that as many supports as required can be included under the umbrella of that goal.
For example, most 25 year olds would want to move out of home and live as independently as possible – it’s no different for people with a disability and the NDIS can support you to ‘live an ordinary life’ in a goal such as this. This is a goal that might take a number of years to achieve with many supports needed along the way such as day to day support, life skills training, transport training, positive behaviour support.
For more information, read our blog on goals.
We recommend it, yes. You’ll need a diagnosis of your primary disability from your treating health professional, whether that’s your GP, neurologist, allied health specialist or other specialist, and a list of your current treatments.
Don’t worry if you don’t have everything as the planner will ask you to get anything that they need that you don’t have at the meeting, but it’s better to come as prepared as possible so as not to delay access to the scheme.
Your evidence will need to confirm your disability, describe your treatments and outcomes (current and future) and confirm the impacts of your disability on areas of your life (social interaction, self-care, learning, mobility, communication etc).
If you need help to get your evidence together Local Area Coordinators (LAC) can help you.
For more information view the page about providing evidence of your disability on the NDIS website.
Informal supports are those provided by parents, siblings and other family members. The NDIS will take into account the ongoing capacity of family members and carers to provide these and are able to provide alternative supports where needed (e.g. help with showering, transport, short term accommodation aka respite). The NDIS do have guidelines about what is reasonable to expect families to provide. It’s important all informal supports are included in your pre-planning activity as some of these may be able to be funded under NDIS.
For more information view the page on the NDIS website about informal supports.
You will be asked how you want to manage your funds and supports in your NDIS planning meeting.
Management of your funds is called ‘Plan Management’. Your options for Plan Management are:
Plan Management is funded as part of your plan and does not take away from the funding allocated to the person with a disability. You can read more about Plan Management in our blog “How will you manage your NDIS budget”.
Managing your supports and services is called ‘Support Coordination’.
There are three levels of Support Coordination depending on how complex the support required is. Support Coordination can alleviate some of the day-to-day work of coordinating multiple services and providers and can be funded as part of your plan. You can read more about the various options in our blog “Support coordination – what it is and what to look for before you decide”.
Core and Capacity building budgets in your NDIS Plan can be used to access supports such as to assist a participant to engage in community, social and recreational activities during the week (including weekends and public holidays).
Your Hart 2 Hart Pty Ltd charge fees at the rate reflected in the NDIS Price Guide 2022-2023.
If transport is required, you will be charged 1:1 plus up to 60 minutes of travel from our head office in Melbourne CBD. We offer a combination of the following supports:
Support worker using their own vehicle, you will be required to pay $0.85 per km for the workers travel in their own vehicle (including when the participant is not in the vehicle). Any tolls or parking fees will also be charged.
Your Hart to Hart partners with Uber. All expenses in relation to Uber, will be billed back to your plan in hours. We use this support for major sporting events and night time events.
The following are the costs for service for community participation in our groups:
Monday to Friday – 6:00am to 8:00pm:
1 support worker to 1 participant = $62.17 per hour
1 support worker to 2 participant = $34.82 per hour
1 support worker to 3 participant = $25.70 per hour
Monday to Friday – 8:00pm onwards to midnight
1 support worker to 1 participant = $68.50 per hour
1 support worker to 2 participant = $38.36 per hour
1 support worker to 3 participant = $28.31 per hour
Saturday
1 support worker to 1 participant = $87.51 per hour
1 support worker to 2 participant = $49.01 per hour
1 support worker to 3 participant = $36.17 per hour
Sunday
1 support worker to 1 participant = $112.85 per hour
1 support worker to 2 participant = $63.20 per hour
1 support worker to 3 participant = $46.64 per hour
Public Holiday
1 support worker to 1 participant = $138.20 per hour
1 support worker to 2 participant = $77.39 per hour
1 support worker to 3 participant = $57.12 per hour
Capacity building community participation
$70.87 per hour (no uber for weekend)
If there is less than 3 participants in the group, we will charge appropriately as per the above costs.
Your Rights
Our rights
Your responsibilities
COVID-19 restrictions
If you have a cough or any type of respiratory illness, please stay at home. If you turn up to the group feeling ill, you will be asked to leave as we are required to facilitate a safe environment for all.
We take the health and safety of our staff and participants very seriously. If you feel ill, please give us a call and provide a maximum of 7 days notice no charges will be made from your plan, unless the ticket has already been purchased. When the ticket to an event is purchased and you cancel after this, you will be charged as if you are going to the event.
Terms and conditions
If you call this service or want us to do administrative work for the participant. We will charge the 1:1 rate for time taken (charged in 15 minute increments). This excludes the following:
Confirming group meeting time/uber pickup
Discussing what group the participant wants to do next
Completing the service agreement
If you need to cancel or postpone the appointment, please provide a minimum of 7 days’ notice (unless it is a ticketed event as per above). If the appointment is cancelled within this time, the total hours that was quoted as part of the service agreement, will be charged. This will be charged from the core supports line item in the plan. If it is raining, the event will still go ahead unless you hear from us. If an event is not taking place, you will be advised prior to the event.
If a support worker needs to travel to your house for supports, a maximum of 60 minutes of funding will be charged from your core budget from our head office based on 1 to 1 ratio and the costs of uber related expenses (if required) will be charged to the core budget.
If the group activity program of your choice involves high popularity events and the tickets require early purchase for participation, you will be charged 100% of service hours for that support should you cancel. This clause will relate to high popularity events where we need to book ahead of time to secure seats. These shifts are rostered for you and, for high demand events, we need customers to ensure that they can commit to participation in these events before booking service. As your ticket is not transferable if you book for the high demand event it is final and the 7 day notice period does not apply.
If your Plan Manager does not pay the invoices within 14 days of invoices been raised, you will not be able to be able to participate in the group activities until the account is paid up to date.
The service agreement can be completed once for each financial year. Signing this agreement confirms that you are aware of the terms and conditions of this agreement. We are able to accept emails from the participant as part of this service agreement if they would like to attend an activity.
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Core support budgets in your NDIS Plan can be used to access short term accommodation (respite) during the week (including weekends and public holidays).
Your Hart 2 Hart Pty Ltd charge fees at the rate reflected in the NDIS Price Guide 2022-2023.
If transport is required, Your Hart to Hart partners with Uber. All expenses in relation to Uber, will be billed back to your plan in hours on top of the Short Term Accommodation rate.
The following are the costs for service for short term accommodation (this includes our group activities if the participant would like to attend):
Monday to Friday:
1 support worker to 1 participant = $1928.20 per day
Saturday
1 support worker to 1 participant = $2465.80 per day
Sunday
1 support worker to 1 participant = $3124.12 per day
Public Holiday
1 support worker to 1 participant = $3782.44 per day
Your Rights
Our rights
Your responsibilities
COVID-19 restrictions
We take the health and safety of our staff and participants very seriously. If you feel ill, please give us a call and provide a maximum of 7 days’ notice,
Terms and conditions
If you need to cancel or postpone the appointment, please provide a minimum of 7 days’ notice. If the accommodation is cancelled within this time, the total hours that was quoted as part of the service agreement, will be charged. This will be charged from the core supports line item in the plan.
If your short term accommodation lasts longer than 7 days, 2 separate invoices will be sent to the plan manager (if plan managed)
Self-Managed participants
If you are self-managed, you will be invoiced prior to the short term accommodation. Payment of invoice will be required 1 week prior to the short term accommodation commencement date.
If no payment or proof of payment is made prior to the accommodation, the participant will be unable to attend.
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