Early childhood partners
Families and carers of children younger than 9 who have an NDIS funded plan will work with an early childhood partner. Early childhood partners have experience working with children with disability or developmental delay. The NDIS early childhood approach is based on the principles of best practice in early childhood intervention to achieve better long-term outcomes for children.
Find out more about early childhood partners.
Local area coordinator (LAC)
Most NDIS participants over 9 years of age will have an LAC to help them understand and use their plan. This includes showing participants how to use the myplace portal and connecting them with funded supports. LACs support participants throughout their plans to monitor how the plan is going, and they can check progress regularly.
Early childhood partners and LACs come from organisations in your local community, which work with the NDIA to deliver the NDIS.
Support coordinator
If early childhood or LAC partners are not available in your area, or you need more help coordinating your supports and services, the NDIA may fund a support coordinator in your NDIS funded plan. A support coordinator will help you use your plan to work towards your goals, live more independently, increase your skills and be included in your community and in employment.
Specialist support coordination is a higher level of support coordination. It is an option for people whose situations are more complex and who need specialist help to coordinate their supports and services.
Find out more about support coordination.
Implementation meeting
We will ask if you want to meet and talk about how to use your plan. Your My NDIS Contact can arrange this for you after we approve your plan.
Find out how long this takes in our Participant Service Guarantee.
Before the meeting you might like to:
- ask someone you trust to come with you, such as a family member, friend or carer
- check we have your bank account details, if you self-manage your funding
- write down any questions or concerns you have.
There are some things you might like to find out about before the meeting. If this is your first plan, these might be new to you. We can explain these things at the implementation meeting:
- the myplace portal
- what you can and can’t buy with your funding
- supports you can get outside the NDIS, like informal, community and mainstream supports .
- how to find service providers
- service agreements and service bookings.