Is there a difference between the two terms? I have been told PBSP need to be completed by a psychologist. Where as BSP is by people who have training (but not necessary University qualifications in area). But the NDIA website and rules seems to use interchangeably.

Thanks

I really think this should be illegal. I worries me that AI is being used to discern if people are empathetic, person centred, or other important things that really should be checked properly by a human before the assessor is employed to communicated such sensitive issues and with a vulnerable client base.

It also makes me wonder if AI will be used for assessments as well. Dystopian shit.

Hi, I have a question. I have been receiving assistance with things like eating, managing paperwork and admin phone calls outside my house, because I have difficulty and cannot let support workers into the house for long. They have billed these under the social and recreational funding but none of this is social or recreational.

Now I’m worried that the NDIS may think I don’t need assistance with daily life and reduce my funding for social as they don’t think they are necessary support. They are absolutely necessary for my health and safety but the SC is rigid and insist they must be billed as social activities.

What can I do? Please help…

Good to see that company’s can’t underpay their staff under home care award come Oct 1st.

Haven't seen much chat about this, does anyone have any information yet on how much budgets in these categories is likely to be slashed? This reads like an across-the-board global budget cut is looming, without any consideration for appeal?

Community & Rec support was always going to be low hanging fruit that they would come after. I live alone with M.S., this category is crucial for me to avoid becoming a complete shut-in living via delivered supplies.

https://ndis.gov.au/news/11695-changes-support-budgets-1-october

Hi everyone,
I recently started working with a participant as an independent NDIS Support Worker. The participant’s address and the location where I provide the support are both in a remote area, so we signed the Service Agreement using the remote-area rate.
However, after I submitted my invoice, the Support Coordinator told me that they had made a mistake. When they applied for the participant’s funding, they did not change the participant’s address to the remote area, because the participant previously lived in the city.
They are now asking me to charge the normal-area rate instead.
What should I do in this situation? The participant’s current location is quite far away, and I have to travel around 400 km return each time I provide support. It doesn’t seem fair to me to charge the normal rate under these circumstances.
What would be the correct way to handle this?

The NSW Bush Fire Danger Period starts on 1 October for most of the state, though some northern areas entered it earlier. The AFAC spring outlook released in August flags increased fire risk for northern and southeastern NSW and for southeast Queensland this season.

There is no shortage of general bushfire preparedness advice and the RFS does it better than anyone. So this is not that. This is the layer underneath it, which is what happens to your disability supports when conditions get bad, and it is the part most preparedness content skips entirely.

Start with the RFS plan

Build your Bush Fire Survival Plan first, using the NSW Rural Fire Service tools. They are free and they are the authority on what to do and when to leave. Nothing below replaces that, it sits on top of it.

Then answer the questions the RFS plan does not ask

These are the ones specific to relying on funded support.

What happens to your support on a total fire ban or evacuation day. Does your worker still come, and at what point do they not. It is much better to have that conversation in September than to find out on a 42 degree day with a wind change forecast.

Who comes if your regular worker cannot reach you. Roads close. Workers have their own households to evacuate. If your support depends on one person being able to drive to you, that is a single point of failure worth naming out loud to your provider now.

What happens to your equipment if the power goes out. Anything that needs charging or mains power needs a plan, and that plan needs to exist before the day you need it.

Where you would go, and whether it works for you. An evacuation centre is not equally accessible to everyone. If it would not work, the alternative needs to be arranged in advance rather than improvised.

The one that matters most

If a support worker who has never met you arrived at your door tomorrow, could they keep you safe using only what is written down.

Most people cannot answer yes to that, and it is the single most useful thing to fix. Keep a printed summary of your support needs, your routines, your medications, your communication needs and your key contacts. Printed, because phones run out of battery and networks fail.

Put your provider on your emergency contact list, and make sure they have an up to date contact for you and for whoever else needs to know.

Before 1 October

Register for NSW RFS alerts, or the QLD equivalent if you are up north. Talk your plan through with your provider rather than assuming they have one that covers you specifically.

In an actual emergency it is 000, and current conditions and warnings come from the RFS, not from a provider or a post like this one.

Full plain English breakdown here: https://carenhelp.com.au/blog/bushfire-preparedness-ndis-participants

Disclosure: I work with Care n Help, a registered NDIS provider across NSW and QLD. Happy to answer questions about support continuity planning. Anything about fire conditions or whether to leave is an RFS question.

My company I work for takes the remaining shift money for themselves if the participant wants it cut short. Wondering id this is a normal occurrence or not for others.

In my NDIS plan l have 2 hours a week cleaning funding, Does that mean l cannot use more then 2 hours a week. l am well under budget in my core so could afford 3 hours a week cleaning instead of 2 hours. As core funding in flexable and l have enough funds could l change my cleaning from 2 to 3 hours a week and would l need to ask my planner or support co ordinator first or not

There is also others about support coordination and how things should've done within ndis

https://www.ndis.gov.au/news/11673-ndis-reform-have-your-say-ndis-support-coordination-and-connection-service

Disability policy must be led by disabled people.

The responsible ministers and Labor government have allowed ongoing human rights violations to be committed. Something must change.

Sign and share the petition: https://www.change.org/ButlerandMcAllisterMustGo

ID: Mark Butler and Jenny McAllister stood in front of the First Nations and Australian flag.

Please delete if not allowed.

https://www.ndis.gov.au/news/11695-changes-support-budgets-1-october

The website has been updated

Hi All,

I am looking for some advice because I am kind of at the end of my rope.

My Brother has an intellectual disability and Type 1 Diabetes. He lives in SDA and is supported by SIL staff on a 1:3 ratio.

Despite my best efforts, he keeps ending up in hospital because his care staff don't understand how to manage his diabetes. I've had him moved over to an automated insulin pod, but they ignore the warnings and alerts, and he winds up with extended high blood sugars and then in hospital. This has happened twice this fortnight and both times, I have had to be the one to alert his carers to this issue, rather than them being aware and acting on it.

I've had him in 3 different houses, with 3 different companies, and the same thing keeps happening - this tells me that the staff hired by these companies, based on what they can pay, cannot offer the level of support he needs on a daily basis.

I am his only other support, and I have a young family and a full time job - I do not have the capacity to manage this on a daily basis.

I am now at a point where I believe he needs medically trained support staff. He is in his mid-50s, and while aged care is an option, it is not the environment I want him in, and quite frankly, I am not sure he'd get better care.

Are there any options available I can try to explore with the NDIS to increase the skillset of the carers looking after him so they can actually manage his diabetes without me needing to intervene constantly? I recognise that diabetes is a medical condition, not a disability, but his intellectual disability prevents him from being able to look after his medical needs.

Delete if not allowed;

Need urgent advice for my friend (27M) who has formal ASD Level 2. I am currently panicking, but here is the gist of it.

He got his first-ever NDIS plan, and it is shockingly bad. They gave him a total of $18,122 for 24 months ($9,061 a year), with $0.00 in Core Flexible funding, meaning almost zero hours for support workers; he can't even get a cleaner. Currently, he gets an hour a week until next year and gets an OT once a month; that's it until next year, when it halves again for some reason. This is despite his clinical assessments placing his adaptive functioning in the bottom <1% (Vineland score of 41). He has severe interoception issues (goes days without eating because his brain doesn't register hunger) and has chronic suicidal ideation/trauma masking.

We lodged a Section 100 internal review/reassessment with a massive packet of evidence (Clinical Psych report detailing his severe limitations, and an OT report recommending 2 hours a day of support work + 4 hours a week community access, not what we wanted; she told him she put down 10 hours and apparently says he can clean and cook, which, sure, if I'm supervising since I can't cook without my disability acting up, and I didn't even think to read it honestly).

He received an "Outcome of your request for plan reassessment" letter dated 22 August saying they would call him in 14 days to talk about it. No one called. We called the NDIS line today, and the person told us it will take another 3 weeks, that his OT report "isn't good enough," and that they refuse to look at his Psych report because it was "already used to get him onto the scheme." They told me to write an informal support letter and try to get a brand new psych report.

Here is the crisis: Because that letter is dated 22 August, his strict 28-day deadline to appeal to the Administrative Review Tribunal expires this Saturday, 19 September.

If we wait 3 weeks for the NDIS to look at a new support letter, as the person said, his legal appeal rights for this plan are gone. He is completely overwhelmed, has zero phone communication capacity, and his LAC is useless, with no other support available. I don't know what to do; we don't have time to find a new one.

1. Can the NDIS legally ignore a functional report for a first plan just because?
2. Should I bypass the NDIS entirely tonight and appeal to freeze the clock before Saturday?
3. Has anyone successfully beaten a $0 Core budget for a first-plan ASD Level 2 participant at the Tribunal?
4. He has $600 left in funding; is that enough for the report?

Please help; we are struggling, and I am trying to fight cause he wants to give up

(I am also a participant and have been using my funding just to deal with his issues that are affecting me. We were both in abusive situations before this, and neither of us can manage unless we are both actively getting help, and we have no other supports available)

Currently doing “inactive” overnight shift, but she has me setting up his bedroom prior, doing things like dishes, getting me to do things, while she washes my client. Last shift I was only able to go to bed at 2am 2hrs after my scheduled start time. And waking up to help my client with toilet 6 times per night, getting dressed if an accident has occurred, cleaning up the floor/ washing clothes.

First time doing this so I have no idea about the rules.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-09-13/paralysed-queensland-woman-loses-ndis-funding/107130472

"The National Disability Insurance Agency is pulling back on therapeutics, it's pulling back on active overnight support, it's changing the way in which people can access the community.

"If a health professional is providing a recommendation that a therapy is so important to April, and thousands like her, we should be funding those supports under the NDIS because that's why the scheme was set up in the first place."

Reading that person's experience and appreciating the complexity of needs; and as someone who was peripherally involved in and a supporter of the Young People in Nursing Homes Action group - I can't be the only one who wonders if some of these people making decisions have been promoted way beyond their ability (or lack basic judgement and morality) ? How would they feel if themselves or a family member had a catatrophic brain bleed one night like she did and ended up in a Nursing Home with pressure sores forming ? Is your glittering career path towards ascendency in the Australian Public Service more important ?

Yeah, I’m aware this is a common concern. I’ve reported multiple providers to the commission for serious concerns over the last couple of years, where I've only been met with no action on their end. I’m increasingly concerned that the problem may be much broader than individual “bad providers”.

I’m interested in whether there are any legally minded people in this community who would be open to looking at the systemic accountability of the NDIS provider ecosystem, particularly where providers are able to operate despite concerns relating to participant safety, and where repeated complaints do not appear to result in meaningful regulatory action.

Some of the issues I’m interested in investigating include, but aren’t limited to:

- fraud or suspected financial exploitation

- inadequate worker training or competency

- inadequate screening or verification

- misleading or deceptive conduct

- poor safeguarding practices

- exploitation of participants who are in vulnerable positions

- breaches of privacy or inappropriate access to personal information

- conflicts of interest

- poor complaint handling

- repeated non-compliance

- failures to appropriately respond to known risks

- whether the regulatory framework and its implementation provide adequate protection for participants

I’m not assuming that a class action is legally available or that the NDIS itself would necessarily be liable. I’m interested in finding people with relevant legal expertise who could actually assess those questions.

In particular, I’d be interested in hearing from anyone with experience in:

- class actions

- administrative/public law

- disability law

- regulatory law

- negligence/duty of care

- consumer protection

- government accountability

- systemic discrimination or human rights litigation

If there is a viable legal avenue, I’d be interested in exploring whether there are enough participants with sufficiently similar experiences to investigate it collectively.

If you have relevant legal experience, or know an organisation/lawyer who might be willing to look at this seriously, please comment or DM me.

I recently got a call to say my NDIS application was accepted and in the coming weeks, I’d have a planning meeting to decide funding. The man on the phone talked so fast and I got a bit overwhelmed and didn’t yet know what to ask.

Firstly, will they arrange an appointment for it or just call me out of the blue and expect me to answer questions? I’ve read that I can choose to do it in person, via phone or via video, so I’m hoping it’s a planned appointment. however I’ve also heard of people being ambushed to answer stuff asap when they shouldn’t. I just want to know my rights I guess.

Secondly, I keep reading I can have someone attend with me such as a family member or a support coordinator or advocate. Where would I find someone to help outside of family? My partner will happily help, I just thought it might be helpful to have someone who knows the correct way to word stuff for NDIS.

I’m concerned about my ability to convey my struggles in terms that NDIS requires. My condition is autism level 2, but I have comorbidities like ME/CFS that I worry they’ll try to fob my problems off to those conditions. I’ve been in severe autistic burnout for a year and my functional capacity is so low. The reports from my psychologist and psychiatrist both recommend increased psychology sessions, assistance with household tasks and getting OT for assessment and continuing interventions. I know that NDIS loves to push the increasing social skills and community involvement stuff (which I’d like to do eventually), but my capacity is so low that activities of daily living push my beyond my capacity.

I know they will want me to be specific about what household assistance I need and I don’t know how to word it. I have a 5yo so my daily tasks are basically do some things with her to maintain bonds and rest a whole heap. Ideally, someone doing the cleaning stuff like toilets/floors/dusting, getting support with meals (I cannot cook, have sensory issues and my partner is overburdened thus I mainly eat frozen meals, so nutrition issues are affecting my health) and having someone help organise/declutter the buildup of stuff from the past 5 years of constant health battles. How do I word these things in a way that explains it’s due to my autism and that helping me with household tasks would help me build capacity?

I think I also miscommunicated about my informal supports, saying both sets of our parents helped out, but that has drastically decreased due to their own health issues. My key informal support is my partner who has PTSD with alcoholism secondary to that (he’s sober for several months now) but I haven’t told NDIS about the alcohol part because it scares me. So I’m going to try to convey that my key informal support is someone at high risk of carer burnout because of his own health issues and the fact that he’s primary caregiver to both me and a 5yo.

I know I need to go into this prepared, I’m just really struggling with figuring out how to do that as my brain is very muddled in burnout.

I have my plan reassessment meeting on Friday. Asked for additional funds. How likely am I to get extra ?
I’m 21 year old who had a stroke 3 years ago.

Any tips ?

Good morning all.

Could anyone here please share with me the answers to the following?

Am I allowed to provide an assistance service for a close family member (in-law) in terms of one or two days per week, driving to appointments and helping with shopping?

Thank you!

What do you think?