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The Australian Government is taking action against some unscrupulous providers who are exploiting the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) by encouraging thousands of participants to spend their NDIS funding too quickly and on non-disability supports. This week, the National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIA) and the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission have taken the initiative to write to plan managers and support coordinators who support NDIS participants, reminding them of their obligations. Earlier this month, both the Federal Budget and the NDIA’s Quarterly Report showed that intra plan inflation was a major cause of growth in the Scheme. NDIS Minister Bill Shorten said the letter to plan managers also reflects anonymised data matching between 900 NDIS plan manager ABNs and the ATO, which showed that 343 of those ABNs would have failed a statement of tax record at the time.

The NDIA and NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission is writing jointly to all Plan Managers and Support Coordinators who support participants to remind them of their obligations to meet record keeping responsibilities and conflict-of-interest obligations, not engage in practices which facilitate the misuse of NDIS funds and comply with all Commonwealth, State and Territory laws, including tax obligations.

Mind Australia is trialling the delivery of a time-limited, 12-24 month residential based recovery-orientated peer learning support program to participants with a significant psychosocial disability. The project focuses on a personal and shared recovery model that aims to improve access to community mental health services and supports participants in developing their informal and community supports networks. Through these measures, the project will help participants to build their capacity and confidence to transition to mainstream housing where they can achieve a greater level of independence.

Possability is trialling the use of an Enhanced Practice Leader role within supported independent living environments to improve the implementation and integration of Positive Behaviour Support Plans for participants with complex support needs. The Enhanced Practice Leader provides supervision, real-time practice coaching and specialist advice to staff working within participants’ homes. This model ensures supports are delivered and implemented in line with the participant’s individual goals and their Positive Behaviour Support Plans while also considering the ecological supports required within each home to ensure the best outcomes for all residents. This model aims to provide better consistency and greater stability within the home for both participants and staff.

Rocky Bay is working in partnership with Latrobe University to implement an Active Support and Frontline Practice Leadership Model. The Active Support and Frontline Practice Leadership Model, featured in the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission’s recent Own Motion: Inquiry into aspects of supported accommodation (January 2023), seeks to empower participants to decide how they live and the level of support they receive. Staff will receive training on empowering participants to exercise their ‘choice and control’ to become more independent within the home environment. They will provide ‘just the right amount’ of support and guidance, enabling participants to complete tasks autonomously in a safe and supported environment.

Supporting Independent Living Cooperative (SILC) seek to demonstrate how SILC work with families and people with disability to co-design home and living solutions to best meet the person's needs. SILC does this through the set-up of family governed cooperatives, which are operated by families of people with disability. SILC’s model recognises that people with disability with their families, are in the best position to make decisions about where they live, who they live with, and who supports them. The project will observe how SILC co-design the home and living solution to best meet the person's needs, and as a result, optimising outcomes in the person's social, community and living environments.

We Care NSW is working with a small number of participants with an identified goal of transitioning from supported independent living to more independent living arrangements within the community through intentional capacity-building programs inside and outside of the home environment. We Care NSW are doing this by creating individual care teams for participants who will help them in implementing evidence-informed, co-designed intensive skill building plans tailored to the participant’s individual needs and circumstances. These plans are implemented as a part of the participant’s everyday life which allows capacity to be built naturally within the home and community over time.

There are 2 upcoming planned outages over the weekend. Planned outages allow us to update and improve our systems.

Self Advocacy Sydney are co-designing a housing roadmap with NDIS participants with intellectual disability using a peer support model. Peer Support Mentors will be employed to help participants understand their home and living support options. The project will use easy-to-understand accessible audio-visual resources to: build individual capacity guide participants to understand available options make informed home and living decisions The co-created resources will utilise online platforms such as YouTube to broadcast home and living options to a wider audience.

Summer Foundation are co-designing a housing roadmap with NDIS participants including those with complex communication needs.