Your NDIS plan is approved – great! Now to start organising how you want to spend your support budgets to get the services that best suit your needs.You may have access to Support Coordination funds which are specifically designed to help you connect with the services and supports you want in order to achieve your goals. Each Support Coordination service will be different but they all aim for the same thing; to work with you to identify options for community, mainstream and NDIS funded supports, to help you choose and establish service agreements with providers, to help you understand your plan and support you to reach your goals. In this post, we will discuss three things that you can do in order to get the best from your NDIS Support Coordination service.
Know what you want
Planning is always important. It is really helpful if you know what you want from your NDIS plan before meeting with your Support Coordinator. For instance, do you only need someone in the short term to coordinate some of your supports? Or are your needs more complex that requires someone to guide you through the process and coordinate multiple supports? Do you know what services you would like to engage, or have no idea about the services in the local area and need a Support Coordinator who has a comprehensive listing of local providers? By knowing your own needs, this will help you choose the Coordinator is best for you.
Your Support Coordinator – Your choice
If you’ve never had a Support Coordinator before, make sure you list questions about what you would like them to help you with. Have a list ready before your meeting so you don’t miss anything. What are they going to help you with? Have they had previous experience in coordinating services? What successes have they achieved with previous clients? How will you communicate with them and when? If you’ve had a Support Coordinator before, let them know what worked well and what didn’t with the previous service. Be honest and polite, emphasising things you think you both should do in order to make things easier. Remember, it’s your choice and if it doesn’t work out you can always choose a different provider and that’s okay, too. The Support Coordinator you choose should be someone who you have a good rapport with.
Be clear with your goals and expectations
Writing down clear goals and expectations and discussing it at the start will help both you and your Support Coordinator tremendously. A good Support Coordinator is someone who will take your input seriously and consider what’s important to you about your NDIS plan and about what you want to achieve. It may be worthwhile spending some time talking about your goals so that you can be confident that the Support Coordinator will be able to engage providers that best suits your needs. Make sure any service agreement that you sign clearly outlines your rights and responsibilities and how progress against your goals will be monitored and reviewed. You and your Support Coordinator should have the same aim – for you to receive services and support that help you achieve your goals and aspirations.
Why goal setting is an important skill for life
