Celebrating World Down Syndrome Day 2024
March 21st marks a significant day on the global calendar – World Down Syndrome Day. It’s a d...
Though the NDIS is a highly-valued service that helps so many people in their day to day lives, the NDIS system can be challenging to navigate. A support coordinator can help NDIS participants and their friends, family, and carers to understand the system and allow the participant to access as much assistance as they require.
This blog explores what a support coordinator for the NDIS is, what they do, and how they can help you navigate the NDIS. To enquire about support coordination, contact our friendly and knowledgeable team at Breakthru today.
Support coordination is a stated support in your NDIS plan that gives you funding and access to a support coordinator. As an expert in the sector, support coordinators aim to help you understand your NDIS plan and holistically connect with NDIS funded, mainstream and community supports to ensure you can achieve your goals. Support coordination is offered in three levels:
Support connection helps you to utilise your plan and pursue your goals, building your ability to connect with supports. This type of funding is generally allocated to participants that are high functioning and somewhat independent, but still require occasional assistance to manage their plan.
Support coordination helps you to build the skills you need to understand your plan, allowing you to make the most of it. This can be done through a mix of supports such as helping you to maintain relationships, manage service delivery tasks, and live more independently. Support coordination is the most common type of support and is provided to participants who need consistent support to effectively manage their NDIS plan.
This level of support coordination is designed to help those in complex situations who require more specialised support. Specialist support coordination is generally delivered by a trained clinician (such as an Occupational Therapist) who has more specialised knowledge about complex therapies and conditions. This is the highest level of support coordination and is generally provided to participants with high needs.
A support coordinator’s everyday tasks will depend on the participant’s needs, goals, and circumstances, including the level of support coordination needed. A support coordinator can:
If aspects of your NDIS plan seem unclear, your support coordinator can provide clarification. They can help you understand your support budget, what you can use your funding for, how your funding is managed, and what other requirements may be needed to access your supports. For example, they can recommend high-quality and reliable therapists, book appointments, and design ways to help you independently manage your own schedule.
Your support is tailored to you, and your support coordinator can help you to find the providers, services, and supports that are most likely to benefit you. This can include community, government, and funded supports that can help you to pursue your goals.
Your support coordinator can help you to decide how you would like your supports and services delivered, try different providers and new supports to find what best suits your needs, and arrange your services to fit your plan and your budget.
Your support coordinator should be familiar with services offered in your local community. With this knowledge, they can assist you to find services for you to access, choose appropriate NDIS funded, community and mainstream supports, and advocate for you if required.
They can also set up service agreements and service bookings, helping you to understand and negotiate the services and support you want. Your support coordinator can also find any problems that may prevent you from using your plan and work to fix this.
If there are any problems that may stop you from using your plan, your support coordinator can help with these. They can check how your supports are working for you, help you plan for if something goes wrong, and help you to change providers if necessary.
Refining and reflecting on your plan may be necessary, and your support coordinator can help you to do these by coaching you through it. In doing so, they can help you to build your confidence and gain the skills to implement your plan yourself so you can get the most out of it.
The National Disability Insurance Agency, or NDIA, is an independent statutory agency. Your support coordinator will provide this agency with reports on how they’ve helped you use your plan to pursue your goals. They will report when implementing a new plan, during the middle of a plan, and provide plan review reports including recommendations for future plans.
Independence is a common goal, and your support coordinator can assist you to build this so you can choose and control your supports. They will work with you, your family, and your carers to help find providers who can meet your needs, help you to communicate using your preferred method, and create opportunities to do these tasks and others with more independence.
Unexpected events can cause distress regardless of the situation. Your support coordinator can help you to plan for potential changes that may affect you, such as moving house or if you need to go to the hospital. In helping you to plan for such changes, they will also help you to build your confidence so you can do this yourself.
They can also help you to make a plan for accessing the right crisis services when needed, and may be able to connect you with crisis services such as the justice, mental health and child and family protection systems.
Above all else, your support coordinator should have your best interests at heart, and consider these before recommending support and services.
If you’ve been unsure about how to navigate the NDIS and wondered what a support coordinator does, we hope this has helped to answer your questions. If a support coordinator may be able to help in your personal situation, our team at Breakthru is here to help. To enquire about NDIS support coordination, contact our helpful team at Breakthru today.
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