Don’t forget Important Documents for Planning Meetings & Reviews

Friday, March 6, 2020

A “scheduled review” meeting will usually occur in a face-to-face capacity with either a LAC, or NDIA planner. These are the guys who collect your relevant information and create the next NDIS plan. It is therefore really important that they have the clearest picture of your support needs.

With regards to review meetings, it can potentially be a stressful time – chasing up providers and quotes, or reports needed, and it can be even harder when you don’t have a support person like a support coordinator to assist you in notifying you what is really beneficial and what is not so relevant.

We have tweaked a list of helpful tips (that was sent to us directly from an NDIA planner) to ensure you remember everything on the day of:

• Reports outlining the diagnosed disability/s and the diagnosed level of impact on a persons’ functioning (i.e. Mild/moderate /severe intellectual disability, mild/moderate /severe autism etc.). This is especially important if these have not been provided previously, if there has been a change in diagnosis or if there has been an additional diagnosis made. If you are unsure whether or not they have been provided previously, please have them ready in case.

• Copies of any assessments done during the year. Previous assessments can also be provided if they have not been provided before and if they are relevant to the disability and the required supports.

Examples of the types of assessments include but are not limited to: - Functional assessments (OT, Speech, Behavioural, physiotherapist, psychological, drug and alcohol, nursing / medical etc.) assessments done to inform intervention plans (as above), Diversional or activity assessments to determine interests and possible activity options etc.

•  Reports completed using the funding in the plan have to be provided. They can be provided at the end of an intervention (if it stops before the plan period does) or at the time of plan review at the latest.

• Reports should be only 12 months old maximum unless it can be determined that nothing has changed. Between 2 to 3 years may be acceptable.  Anything over 3 years (except for initial diagnosis documents as these usually don’t change in many instances) are usually too out of date to be of much use.  But this can be discussed should the situation arise.

• Copies of data collection sheets if relevant: eg correlated Sleep Log if the participant is awake for significant periods of the night and needs support, incident reports, epilepsy logs etc.

• Copies of support plans as they relate to the interventions that have been funded and provided. i.e. any plans that should and have been created to assist someone to build their capacity in any area (domestic tasks, personal care, social skill development, behavioural BSP etc). This also includes information on any group interventions such as afterschool programs, holiday programs etc. Phone the managing staff at these services and explain your review is coming up and they should be able to help you. Remember every intervention and service funded by the NDIA should have some type of service plan attached to it or how else can we support the effectiveness of the activity and what else may be needed.

• Copies of the reports or information relating to the progress of these intervention plans, their outcomes and how they relate to further requests for funding (or not if goals have been achieved). These reports should also outline the successes and achievements, any barriers experienced by the participant/ provider, strategies and interventions that were planned but not implemented and why this was. Again, inform all of your NDIS Support Providers that your review is coming up and outline you will be needing some report, and potentially a quotation for next plan.

• Support Coordinators reports should also outline how funds were used and the justifications behind why further requests for funding are being made. These should be able to be based on the information requested above.

• If exploration of potential accommodation options was undertaken during the year, the support coordinator must complete and provide a Housing Options Assessment Report.

• Copies of any recently made Court, Tribunal or other legal orders. This includes any documents around Court conditions including the dates for upcoming hearings, reporting conditions etc., if relevant. Relevancy can usually be determined by considering if any of these things will need to be considered in planning. i.e. if someone may be incarcerated during the plan period, if someone is being released during a plan period and the relevant dates, Orders from the Mental Health Tribunal that contain conditions around discharge and the relevant dates, requests to support someone to navigate the legal system, requests for funding to provide  assistance  for someone to manage a legal order, if there are conditions around how someone can/should  be supported etc. If in doubt, please ask.   

• Copies of documents relating to the ability of someone to act on someone else’s behalf. Particularly if these have not been provided before or if something has changed. NDIA consent records are meant to be updated every 12 months at least. The more obvious the consent is on the record, the easier it is to use the Helpline and other NDIA systems as well.  

• Copies of bank account details if these have not been provided before, particularly if there is a possibility that someone may be eligible for transport and related allowances.

• Proof of identification may also be required to be produced during a meeting, particularly in certain situations.

It is preferred that these are provided via email to the appropriate inbox before the meeting. However, please feel free to discuss how these documents can be provided with the support coordinator, person making the appointment or with the planner depending on the situation.

In the cases where they are provided via the portal, it is always worth a follow up call or other contact with the NDIA. For some reason (or reasons) the NDIA are not always able to see what is uploaded this way. If you can let the Call Centre (1800800110), the NDIA person making the appointment, the planner or any combination of these  know that documents should be available on the system,  this can be checked and confirmed or an additional copy can be accessed in a timely way.

Whenever possible, please provide these before the meeting and if possible, so the planner can have a read before the meeting date, and be knowledgeable for the scheduled meeting. (they will not always get the time to do this.)

This is not an official NDIA document and should not be treated as such. This is for your information and use and will hopefully make planning meetings and the creation of the subsequent plans easier, quicker and more accurate.

Best of luck!

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