NDIS Review - The Key Recommendations

The long-awaited NDIS Review finally dropped last Thursday. We’ve spent some time reading through the mammoth document, and want to share some of the big themes and what they mean for our community. At the highest level, the NDIS Review proposed a vision for disability support in Australia that focuses on an ‘ecosystem’ of support.

The Review says: This [ecosystem] should be made up of inclusive and accessible mainstream services, a thriving foundational support system for all people with disability, and a reformed participant pathway in the NDIS for those needing individualised budgets.

What this means is more supports are needed for people with disability outside the current scope of the NDIS, and in addition to the NDIS. Foundational supports refer to disability-specific supports that are available to all people with disability, outside of individualised budgets. The Review intends that these foundational supports will ensure there is a graduated system of support for all people with disability, and reduce the inequity between people on the NDIS and those who are not.

Exactly how the Review proposes to achieve this is outlined within its recommendations. This is what we will step through below. There is also lots of information on the NDIS Review website.

But first, some context.

The NDIS Review was established by Minister Bill Shorten in October 2022 to investigate the major issues facing the NDIS, and ultimately, put people with disability back at the centre of the NDIS. The Review’s purpose was to improve the experiences of participants and families, ensure the sustainability of the NDIS, and find ways to restore trust in the scheme.

Despite these intentions, understandably, the Review has stirred up some concern in the disability community.

The report details 26 recommendations and 139 supporting actions - we’ll go through the major ones below and what they mean for you, and for Hireup. Keep in mind, at this stage recommendations are just that – think of them as suggestions from the NDIS Review team to the government. We don’t yet know which of these recommendations will be accepted by the government, what new legislation will look like (and if it will pass through the Parliament), or how the recommendations will be implemented in practice.

Importantly, the report recommends that any changes are not made in a hurry — it proposes a five-year transition period to implement the recommendations.

All these questions will be answered early next year. For now, here are the key recommendations from the Review explained.

Foundational supports

One of the biggest recommendations to come out of the Review is the introduction of something called ‘foundational supports’. This is largely to help address the lack of support for people with disability who are not eligible for NDIS funding, but certain services will be available to people on the NDIS as well. Foundational supports would connect with existing mainstream services like childcare and schools.

There are two types of foundational supports:

General: These services will be available to all people with disability, including advice, capacity building, advocacy, information, peer support, and employment services.
Targeted: These services will only be available to people who are not eligible for the NDIS. These supports can include: home and community care, aids and equipment, psychosocial supports, early intervention, support for young people in key life transitions, and help with navigating all of these supports.

The Review has also recommended the introduction of ‘Navigators’ to improve service navigation for people with disability. The Review recommended that Navigators replace the roles of Support Coordinators, Local Area Coordinators (LACs) and Psychosocial Recovery Coaches. Navigators will be tasked with helping people find and access all services including mainstream services, community supports, foundational supports and the NDIS as a whole.

We are still awaiting the detail on exactly how this would work in practice, and the government has committed to making sure that if this recommendation is adopted, the transition will be slow and careful to make sure there are no gaps in services.

There will also be changes to the participant experience of the NDIS, including changes to eligibility to the scheme, a new assessment process, and changes to the way plans are structured. Here is what we know so far about these proposed changes:

Eligibility for the NDIS will change alongside the building of an ecosystem of supports. This means not all people need to be on the NDIS, but they still need support. The Review calls out that eligibility has a focus on medical diagnosis rather than function and disability-related support needs. This has led to inequity, with some participants automatically eligible while others are not and favouring those with means to obtain a diagnosis. We can expect any changes to focus on function, rather than diagnosis.
A new assessment process will be introduced that focuses on the needs of a participant. Assessments will be undertaken by a skilled assessor, and will include a discussion of the risks in a participant’s life and what safeguards could be put in place in response. There will not be timeframes on this process, and participants can take as long as they need. The process will be transparent and applied consistently.
Plan structure and budgets will change to focus on the whole-of-person support needs, rather than line items or diagnosis.

Early Intervention Pathway for under 9’s

The Review has recommended an increase in funding for mainstream foundational and specialist supports for children with disability and developmental concerns. However, it does not mean no children will have access to the NDIS. To support this process, the Review recommends a clarification on what needs can be met through the new foundational support pathway.

A new approach to supports for people with psychosocial disability

The Review recommends a new approach to supports for people with psychosocial disability. It suggests there should be a greater focus on accessing foundational supports for psychosocial disability, and where supports are provided through the NDIS that they be structured and targeted time-limited supports for a defined period of time.

Fairer housing and living support

According to the Minister, the Review recommended consistency should be introduced to housing and living support budgets to make it fairer for NDIS participants. Some of the major recommendations include:

Changing the budget setting process to make sure it’s ‘consistent and sustainable’
Removing the option for people to be funded to live alone except in particular circumstances
Creating a process for people to try out living arrangements before committing to them
Creating a function to allow people to share supports and pool their funds
Removing the Improved Livability Specialist Disability Accommodation (SDA) category and review the other categories

Market oversight and Provider Accountability

The Review recommends that all providers now be enrolled or registered. Instead of a blanket registration process, the level of regulatory requirement would be determined by the risk and complexity of the different supports each provider delivers. For services that pose minimal risk to participants, the process will be simple and straightforward. In contrast, services that are more personal and complex would require a more detailed registration, ensuring a higher level of oversight.

The Review recommends this applies to all providers – from big organisations through to sole traders. The benefit of the four levels means that small providers and sole traders do not have to do the same thing that large providers like Hireup have to do.

While this recommendation will impact on most unregistered providers in the sector, we don’t anticipate much, if any change at Hireup.

Since the beginning, we have chosen to be a registered NDIS provider, because we think it makes us better. We think it is important that providers are accountable to the Quality and Safeguards Commission and the people we support.

These recommendations are just some of the major changes proposed by the NDIS Review, and while they are not yet in place, we recognise the significant impact they could have on people with disabilities and their families, as well as support workers and other providers in the sector.

We want to reassure our clients and workers that, while the NDIS is changing, Hireup isn’t. We’ve put the right processes in place from the start so that our clients and workers are supported to the highest standard possible.

We’ll continue to digest the information from the NDIS review over the coming weeks and keep our community informed with important insights and updates.