How many hours of Support Coordination should be in my NDIS plan?
While the NDIS doesn't publish a standard number of hours for support coordination, the amount funded in your plan is decided against the "reasonable and necessary" criteria, based on your individual circumstances, goals, and the complexity of supports you need help to coordinate.
This means someone with a small, stable support team can need a very different amount of coordination time than someone juggling multiple providers, a housing transition, or a recent diagnosis.
Two participants with a similar disability could end up with quite different amounts of support coordination funding, depending on what's actually happening in their lives at the time of planning.
What can impact coordination time?
While the NDIS doesn't publish a specific number of hours that should be included in your plan, it's useful to understand the kinds of circumstances that can lead to more or less coordination time.
- Lower needs - A small, stable support team, few providers, no major changes on the horizon
- Moderate needs - A handful of providers, some ongoing coordination, occasional changes to manage
- Higher, more complex needs - Multiple providers, a recent transition (like a house move or diagnosis), or an unstable support network needing regular problem-solving
What actually uses up your hours
Support coordination time isn't just face-to-face meetings. It typically covers things like researching and contacting providers, setting up service agreements, monitoring your budget, preparing reports, and troubleshooting problems as they come up.
All of this adds up quickly, which is part of why hours can feel tight even if a plan doesn’t look that way on paper.
This is also where efficiency matters. If a coordinator is spending hours manually searching for and vetting support workers for you, that's time coming directly out of your coordination budget rather than being spent on higher-value work like planning or problem-solving.
Making funded hours go further
If your plan doesn't have as many support coordination hours as you'd like, or you want to make your funded hours go further, here are a few things that can help:
- Preparing for planning meetings and reviews in advance, so coordination time isn't spent putting together information at the last minute.
- Dealing with provider or scheduling issues early, before they become urgent
- Keeping a simple record of what's working and what isn't with your current supports, so your coordinator can act on it quickly rather than needing to investigate from scratch
- Letting your coordinator know about any upcoming life changes in advance (moving house, a new provider, a change in routine), so they can plan ahead rather than problem-solve reactively
- Using tools that reduce manual admin work, such as sourcing and rostering platforms.
On Hireup, coordinators and participants can filter their search for workers by qualifications, availability, and experience, then book them directly in the platform. This frees up funded hours that would otherwise go toward finding a support team, so they can be spent on other types of coordination work.
Find support workers on Hireup
Hireup is an NDIS-registered disability support platform that connects support workers (covered under Hireup's registration) and participants on their own terms.
We believe everyone should have full choice and control of the support they need and the work they do, with safeguards to give everyone full peace of mind.