Keeping up the PACE with your NDIS budgets
Image Description: A young lady in a green shirt has white headphones around her neck and sits at a computer, with an older lady next to her.
From October 2023, the NDIA are rolling out their new computer system, known as PACE, to help improve NDIS plan administration.
Along with this platform change comes some updates to the way plan budgets will be set out. It’s not too different, but it is important to understand what’s included in your own plan, so you can get the support you need, and make the most out of your funding.
How will you know if your plan is on PACE? Well, you should get notified at your plan reassessment meeting. But if you’re not sure, just contact the NDIA, your Local Area Coordinator, your Support Coordinator or Plan Manager - they should all be able to check for you. If you’re not on PACE yet (not everyone will be until at least 2025), here’s an article that explains the budget categories for plans created on the previous system.
And, if you want to get up to speed on all the other changes coming, here’s some FAQ’s on PACE from our partners at My Plan Manager.
Understanding what your plan can access
Whether you’ve had a few NDIS plans on the previous system, or this is your first ever plan, it can be tricky knowing how to best put your plan into action. We hear it a lot in the kinora community - you’re given your plan and are sent on your merry way, with no information about how to actually understand the plan. So that’s why we're here to break down the budgets for you.
Your NDIS funding is there to help you meet your individual needs and achieve your goals. However, rather than being a big pool of money you can use as you see fit, the funding is broken down into different budget categories that determine how it can be used.
There are four overarching support sections: Core, Capacity Building, Capital, and Recurring. It might be helpful to picture them as buckets - the NDIS fills up each bucket depending on what they determine your needs are in each broad area of your life. One bucket might be quite full, another one might be empty, and you can’t transfer anything from one bucket to another.
Each of these sections are broken down smaller into support categories. These support categories are the more specific life areas you need assistance in. When the NDIS fills up your buckets, they will allocate the money to one or more of these categories. For instance, they may fill your capacity building bucket with a bit of health and wellbeing, some support coordination, and a splash of community participation.
Your plan will state a dollar figure for each support category that has been included, and you can use that funding to pay for individual services (or ‘support items’) that align to that category. For example, in your capacity building bucket, funding in your Improved Daily Living category could potentially be used for physiotherapy, occupational therapy, or speech pathology.
The full list of support items that you can access under each category is located in the NDIS Pricing Arrangements and Price Limits document which is generally updated yearly (you can always find the latest version here), but we’ve included some examples below.
Your plan will also state how each category of funding is managed (plan managed, self managed, or agency managed). One plan could include multiple types of plan management, but really it just lets you know who needs to pay the bills for the services you access within that category:
Plan Managed - you need to choose a plan manager who pays the invoices on your behalf.
Self Managed - you need to make payment yourself and claim through the MyPlace portal.
Agency Managed - the NDIS will pay your service provider directly.
Support Category Specifics
Everyone’s plan is a little different, as we all need different types of support, so it’s important to note that your plan will not include all of these budget categories. Nor will you be able to access all of the support examples given - remember that whatever services and supports you are accessing need to be linked to your own disability, impairments and goals. Here’s a worksheet to help figure out if you can go ahead and access a particular support.
For a list of the support categories under each bucket, click the down arrows.
Core Supports
Core supports help with your everyday living, your disability needs and to work towards your goals.
The first four support categories in Core are flexible, so you can use the funding across the categories as you need. This means that, for example, if the plan states funding has been included under the support category “Assistance with Daily Life”, you can actually use it for “Consumables” as well.
Well, that’s how it’s supposed to be, but in practice, we’ve heard that there are some limitations within the PACE computer system currently. So, it may be worth chatting to your Plan Manager or Local Area Coordinator before claiming from a category that has not been specifically included in your plan, to make sure those payments will through.
The final two Core categories are “stated”, which means you can only use the funding for the specific purpose listed in your plan.
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Assistance with Daily Life:
Support workers to help with your everyday needs, house cleaning, gardening, short term accommodation.
Consumables:
Low cost / low risk assistive technology items that improve your safety, mobility or independence, continence products, equipment needed for eating and drinking.
Assistance with Social & Community Participation:
Support workers for assistance to access community, social, and recreational activities, attendance at group and centre based activities.
Transport:
Transport by a provider to an activity that is not in itself a support, or is a support with another provider.
Home and Living (stated)
Supported Independent Living for help or supervision with daily tasks if you need help at home all the time, Medium term accommodation if your long term home disability supports aren’t ready yet, or Individualised living options to help set your home and supports in the way that suits you.
YPIRAC (Stated)
Some fees and charges for younger people living in residential aged care.
Capacity Building Supports
Capacity building supports help you to work toward your goals and build your independence.
The support categories are not flexible; this means you can only access supports that fall within the specific categories included in your own personalised plan, you are not able to move funding from one category to another. If it includes the budget category “Improved Daily Living” for example, you cannot use this funding to pay for services that fall under the category “Finding and Keeping a Job”.
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Support Coordination and Psychosocial Recovery Coaches:
A Support Coordinator to help link you with services and implement your plan, Psychosocial recovery coach to help identify, plan, design and coordinate supports if you have a psychosocial disability.
Improved Living Arrangements:
Assistance with accommodation and tenancy obligations, to help you find and keep appropriate housing.
Increased Social and Community Participation:
Life skills training, such as public transport training, mentoring and peer- support to develop skills, access to community participation activities, such as camps, classes and vacation activities.
Finding and Keeping a Job:
Workplace assessment and counselling, help to explore your work options and develop a career plan, building of essential foundation work skills, support through the transition from school to work.
Relationships:
Support to develop social skills for participation in community and social activities
Health and Wellbeing:
Exercise physiology, Personal training, Dietician.
Lifelong Learning:
Skills training, advice, and assistance with arrangements when moving from school to further education.
Choice and Control:
If you are plan managed, this support category covers your plan managers fees to pay your invoices, maintain records and monitor your budget.
Improved Daily Living Skills:
Therapeutic supports, such as Physiotherapy, Occupational Therapy and Speech Pathology, Counselling, Audiologist hearing services, Exercise Physiology and dietetics, nursing care (that is not usually covered by the health system), training for carers and parents, skill development training to increase independence.
Behaviour Support:
Specialised behavioural support and management plan, to address behaviours of concern.
Capital Supports
Capital funding is for larger, one-off, or complex purchases that you might need. This funding is not flexible so you can only use it for the purpose specified in your plan document.
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Assistive Technology:
Higher cost, more complex, or customised aids and pieces of equipment that help with your independence, mobility, and safety, modifications to your car.
Assistive Technology – Maintenance, Repair and Rental:
Repairs and maintenance of your assistive technology items, short term rental and trial of assistive technology items, to make sure they’ll be right for you.
Home Modifications:
Design, construction, installation, or changes to your home, to help you live as independently as possible.
Specialist Disability Accommodation:
Specialist housing accommodation to cater for people with very high needs.
Recurring Supports
Recurring supports are paid directly to your bank account on a regular basis and you don’t need to make a claim for them.
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Transport Recurring:
Your everyday transport needs, including public transport, taxis, or rideshares.
The curveballs
Beyond the dollar amount, your plan may have further information listed in each support section, making it trickier to know exactly how you can spend it. Here’s an explanation of some of the terms you might see:
Stated Support
Items or services listed in your plan as a Stated Support means that you can only use the funding for that specific purpose. Often this will be for a particular piece of assistive technology or for things such as your plan manager or support coordinators fees.
There are some supports that can only be accessed if they have been listed in your plan as a stated support, such as assistance with meal preparation and delivery, linen service, and specialised driver training. The Pricing Arrangements and Price Limits document will state that a support item “should only be used if it is a stated item in a plan” if this is the case. If you need support in one of these areas you will need to request it at your planning meeting so that it is included.
Quote Required Supports
If an item or service is listed in your plan as Quote Required, this means you need to obtain a quote from a service provider, submit it to the NDIS and the funds will become available to make the purchase only once they’ve approved it. Again, this is often for larger pieces of assistive technology and equipment.
To speed the process up, have quotes ready to take to your planning meeting for any larger items you need. If they can approve the costs then and there, it’s one less step you’ll need to take before making your purchase (in this example, instead of quote required in your plan, they would include the funding as a stated support).
In-Kind Supports
If there are supports listed in your plan as In-Kind, this means it has already been pre-paid by your state, territory or the Australian Government. This does not come out of your NDIS funding, it just means this support has not yet come across to the NDIS.
Time to put your plan into action
We’ve put together a fact sheet that sets out all of the PACE support categories and what they could potentially cover. Keep it handy together with your plan document so that you’ve always got the information at your fingertips, ready to thrive.
Once you understand your plan and know what it can cover, it’s now time to reach out to service providers that can offer the supports you need. Keep an eye on your budget as you go, stop and reassess regularly whether your plan is working for you, and if anything needs to change, don’t hesitate to reach out to your LAC, NDIA Planner, or Support Coordinator for help.
The Kinora community is here to help you get the best out of your plan. If you’ve still got questions about understanding your plan or need more ideas on how to use your available funds, jump on and reach out.
