What is social and community participation under the NDIS?

Let’s take you through what social and community participation really is, why it’s so essential and how the NDIS can help you access more social and community activities. 

What is social and community participation? 

Social and community participation usually refers to situations where you interact with others in a recreational setting. This could be organised activities that take place in a centre or more casual activities that you arrange with your friends. 

Social and community participation can look like:

• Playing a sport (e.g basketball, volleyball or swimming) 
• Joining a social club (e.g a book club or drama club) 
• Attending a class or course (e.g an art class or poetry class) 
• Volunteering (e.g at a community garden or animal shelter)  
• Going out to dinner or to coffee with a friend 
• Seeing a movie, concert or show.

The importance of social and community participation 

Interacting with others and being part of a community is essential to our wellbeing and overall quality of life. With increased social and community participation comes wider social networks, deeper friendships, more skill development and increased feelings of confidence, safety and belonging. 

How does the NDIS support social and community participation? 

As a core support category under the NDIS, any assistance that you require to access social and community activities will be funded by the NDIS. This means that you can get a support worker to accompany you to a book club, take you to sports practice or even join you at a music festival. The only rule is that this assistance must be deemed reasonable and necessary under the goals for your plan.

For those who need assistance with social and community participation, the benefits of this funding are far reaching.

Pat Neary, a Hireup support worker, explains, “without the NDIS, I think a lot more people would be socially isolated as they need the support to get out and about and connect with their community. Each week I take my client, who’s also a mate, to play sports. He’s part of a special olympics community and needs support to get there. Like any of us, having the opportunity to make friends, develop new skills and play sports is really important.” 

But it’s not just people with disability who benefit from NDIS funding. As Pat highlights, NDIS participation offers a valuable economic opportunity to the wider community. 

Pat explains, “there’s a lot of opportunities for people to go out and participate economically, such as going out to have dinner, buying products and using services with a support worker. The return on investment that people get from that kind of support…there’s an economic benefit as well.”