Understanding NDIS Housing Supports - Webinar Replay
In this webinar we dive into the world of NDIS housing options, including Supported Independent Living (SIL), Specialist Disability Accommodation (SDA), and Individualised Living Options (ILO).
We look at what each of the options means, who might be eligible for them in their NDIS plan, and how the funding is changing under the new NDIS computer system, PACE.
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Patrick Neary, SDA Business Development Manager, Vertika
Chris Molloy, Project Manager, My Plan Manager
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The NDIS won't cover general housing costs, like rent or utilities, but is there for disability-related supports within a chosen living situation. Every plan is different though, so if you're not sure if something will be funded for you, ask the question.
Take the time to understand the options out there, because different set ups will suit different people better, it all comes down to what you need.
The very first step is to include a goal in your NDIS plan about housing, and this can be added at any time, you don't need to wait for your next plan reassessment.
When seeking out a provider, call a few to get a feel for whether they will be the right fit and understand your individual needs, and ask around for personal recommendations too.
If you don't have specific Home and Living supports funded in your plan, you can still use your plan to help with living independently. This could be through assistive technology or home modifications, or using support workers in your home.
If your plan is on the new PACE system, the description of how you can use your funding might be very generic. If you are not sure what it is included for, go back to the planner and ask.
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Hello everyone, and welcome to today's webinar Understanding NDIS Housing Supports.
My name's Erin. I'm part of the team here at Kinora, and I'm also joined by Yvette, who will be manning the chat. She's in the background there somewhere. If you're a Kinora member, you might already know us as coaches within the community.
And today we're so excited to be joined by two special guests. So with us today is Patrick Neary, SDA Business Development Manager at Vertika, who are experts in accessible living and Pat has tonnes of experience in the NDIS housing space. Hi Pat.
And we're also joined today by Chris Molloy, Project Manager at My Plan Manager which is Australia's biggest plan management provider, where Chris uses his incredible NDIS knowledge and understanding to help make sure that people can get their most out of their NDIS plans. Thanks for being here Chris. Thanks for having me. So I am very much looking forward to getting both of their insights here today on a topic that I know can be a bit confusing for some of us, myself included in that. But just before we get started, a bit of a brief background on Kinora
Kinora is free to join. It's a safe and supportive online community where you're able to get support for your NDIS questions from us coaches and our community of thousands of other NDIS participants, their families, support coordinators as well as service providers who are experts in their field.
Now, if you've been to one of our webinars before, you would know that we record these sessions so that we can share the video replay and any resources we mentioned within the Kinora community. If you're not a member though, don't worry, we'll send it straight to your inbox. But of course, we'd love to have you as a member if you do want to join. Like I said, it's free.
If you need closed captioning today, you can turn that on by clicking the More Actions button at the top of your screen and then select Turn on Live Captions.
And there's also a chat button at the top. So if you go ahead and click on that now, that's where you can introduce yourself, pop into any comments or ask any questions as we go along. So that will be keeping an eye on that chat for any questions that come up and we'll answer those at the end of the session. Any questions that we don't get to though, we will make sure to put the answers in the Kinora community and we'll reach out to you direct directly as well with help from Pat and Chris.
So finally, before we jump into it, I'd like to make an acknowledgement of country.
In the spirit of reconciliation. Kinora acknowledges the traditional custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respect to their elders, past, present and future. We acknowledge the culture, diversity, knowledge and experiences of First Nations people and celebrate their contributions, and specifically those living with disability, their families, carers, and individuals dedicating themselves to a career in supporting people with disability.
So if you're just joining us now, the goal of today's webinar is to get an understanding of the different options for housing support within the NDIS, and we'll look at whether or not you or your loved one might be eligible and what those supports actually look like in an NDIS plan.
Now, the NDIS landscape is evolving rapidly and the realm of home and living supports is no exception to that. So I want to start by just acknowledging that navigating these changes can sometimes feel a bit daunting, especially when it involves such a fundamental part of a person's life, you know, having a safe and secure place to call home. And from conversations we've had with some of our community members, we know that this housing journey isn't always straightforward. But it is so important to remember that knowledge is power.
So by staying informed about this topic and keeping up to date with any of these developments as they happen, you're empowering yourself to make informed decisions and better navigate the process. So thank you to everyone for being here today and I really hope that it does help to empower you on your own journey towards securing the support you or your loved ones need. So let's get started. Thank you so much for joining us, Pat and Chris. Thank you.
So let's just start by taking a look at how NDIS support fits into housing in general. So Pat, can you just give us a brief overview of the role of NDIS Home Living supports? What's it all about? Yes, I think there's probably 2 parts to it as well. A lot of people sometimes get muddled up between the two, but there's two separate parts. There's housing and there's support on one side as well. So on the housing side of things, within the NDIS, there is specialised disability accommodation, SDA, but then outside of the NDIS with housing about the private rental market, social housing and Community Housing, um, and that's on the bricks and mortar side of things as well.
So that's one aspect of it. And then on the other aspect, and we'll get into the details around all these later on, but you have the support side of things as well. So what support do you need to live independently in your home, someone else's home, by yourself or with others. So you've got within that you got supported independent living, which I'm sure a lot of people have heard of SIL before being thrown around that acronym.
You know individualised living options ILO, it's kind of a new thing within the NDIS space. And then you also have people who have core support and generally that's a lot less support needs for the for the individual as well. So it's kind of bringing those two together for the individual and you can mix and match from different sides to get the support you need to live independently as well.
Yeah, fantastic. So it's all about helping people to get into any kind of home, whether that's through social housing or yeah, private rental market like you said, or owning their own home, but making sure that they can be independent and safe in that space and helping them to live life the way they want to, right? Yeah. And have the supports to do that. Yeah, fantastic. And Chris, would you just be able to clarify for us a bit what NHS funding actually covers in regards to housing or what it doesn't cover as well?
Yeah, I mean that that's probably, uh, like the, the part of the question that I'd probably be able to get to. And yeah, I think that's done an excellent job there of kind of drawing that distinction between the bricks and mortar and the support, which I think is kind of the important lens to sort of understand the whole piece. But more broadly, I think really if you're looking at things that are unlikely to be funded, the main things that we typically need to call out are things like utilities and rent.
And really the one thing I mentioned here is that every plan is different. And if you think you do have something that's disability related that perhaps is not quite fitting what would typically be considered as a standard support. And it's always a really good, good idea to have a chat to your planner. Speaking purely from a plan management perspective, when we chat with clients and providers about things that we typically understand to be unlikely to be funded by the NDIS, the first things we tend to do is have a look at the clients plan.
So yeah, for those more bespoke arrangements, always important to kind of get things covered in the plan, yeah, 100%. That's a really good point to make because what's gonna be reasonable and necessary, which is how the NDIS decides whether or not something to be covered. It's gonna be completely different for one person to another. So it's a good idea to just ask the questions, even if you're not sure.
Yeah, uh, sorry. Like you mentioned at the start there Pat, there are so many different types of housing support within the NDIS and a whole lot of acronyms in there that can get very confusing. So let's take a look at those a bit more closely. Let's run through the options and see who might be eligible for each type and that you want to start with Specialist Disability Accommodation. Just run us through what that is. Yeah, I can definitely run through that as well. But if people have questions or I say an acronym and people don't know it, just pop it in the chat so I'll get to it as well. But SDA specialised disability accommodation is the bricks and mortar side of things. It's accessible accommodation to people with complex support needs as well.
It is designed to give people an accessible home, um, in the easiest way to think about it as well. So it's for a small proportion of the market and there are a few different categories within that in terms of the disability support to living independently and then the types of home. So in terms of the home, there are people who live in a house and get this funding, people who live in a duplex, villa or townhouse, people who may live in a group home and people and I live in their own apartment as well.
And that's kind of the work that I do is support people living their own apartment with on site support staff as well. So all those options can have support staff around in your home or around the home as well. So there are four options there, but then within those four options there are some more options around buildings aesthetics to think about it as well.
So the first one is called high physical supports. HPS is often referred to as within the sector as well and that's support for people with very complex physical disabilities and needing an accessible home. So the the things that you may notice from an outsiders point of view working through one of these homes is that you'll have wider doorways. So we'll check and get through into every room, um and and be able to turn around and all those things that are needed to be able to access the home as well. That includes the bathroom.
The bathroom would be essentially a wet room. There is no shower. There's a shower curtain but there wouldn't be a little lip or anything just to get in and they'll often be additional rails installed as well. Kitchen bench tops go up and down to be able to support you in that regards as well. But within these rooms there are some other hidden features that you may not see or that can be exposed if you need that type of support as well.
And one of the really cool things that you can see in these homes of people not needing a hoist any anymore, taking up a lot of room in your home, you can get a ceiling hoist installed so the ceiling is reinforced and you can get a hoist that may go from your bedroom to the bathroom as well. And that can come through the form of assistive technology too. So that's one category. Another category that is within there is improved livability.
Improved livability is supporting people who may need support in in a home. It is accessible, but it may not be as accessible as the high physical supports that I mentioned before. So there may be carpet in some of the rooms as well. So that is a bit more resistant if you've got to push a wheelchair or a Walker across that as well. But then it also supports some people, maybe with an intellectual disability or support staff being able to make sure they can keep it, keep line of sight they call it, on the participants they are trying to support as well.
So there might be the layout of the house itself or something like that, yeah. Yeah. So the layout of the house may provide your line of sight for more visible areas and there's it's more open plan in that regard to then um. So that's one, one other category and then you got fully accessible as well. So that is just um kind of just making it fully accessible to like a manual wheelchair. The hype physical I talked about before that's more accessible to our power wheelchair considering they have, they're quite heavy as well, but you've got manual wheelchairs, walkers, people may be with the vision impairment. So that's just very accessible to an individual. There may be a lip or two within the apartment such as a shower as well.
So that is providing support to to those people as well. So those three that I've talked about cater more to people with a physical disability can the IL can cater to people with an intellectual disability as well. But the third one is called robust and that's often for people with behaviours of concern, restrictive practises as well. So that a place that you say, might look and feel like a standard home, but the walls may be reinforced, the glass may be reinforced.
So people who break things, often uh, these places are designed to be able to support them in a safe way so the windows don't break and there's no broken glass around. Um, and support people to live independently that way as well. And one thing I forgot to mention with within all of this is as well you may want to live alone or with others as well. So you can, if you know someone who has a disability and wants to live together, there are options for you to be able to do that.
Or if you wanna live by yourself, there are options to do that. Or if you're happy to and you want to just live in a community with other people, you can do that as well. So um, it is not one size fits all it, it's just working with a provider who can provide accommodation in the way you want. So we provide apartment, but some people may want to live in a group home for example. So it's just finding a provider that has accommodation to support you, to live the life that you want. But that's just the bricks and mortar.
They're not providing support work to you if you get this funding. It's just the bricks and mortar to live independently. Yeah. Sorry. Just to clarify, when you say bricks and mortar, so the funding in the NDIS plan actually covers the cost of the house or the apartment itself, right? Not 100%. It's kind of paying for the additional accessible features within the house as well. And then as Chris talked about before, you would pay utilities a rent contribution as well in anything else that wouldn't fall within that and relate to your disability as well.
OK. So all those four types that you talked about there, the four different types of SDA, obviously, well, they all have in common is someone that has maybe a higher level of needs. So I know that it is only a sort of smaller portion. You mentioned at the start smaller portion of NDIS participants that would be eligible for this. How might someone know if they're eligible? Like in that list is there so there is a criteria that you can go through to see if you may qualify for it.
But another person to reach out within your support networks to find out if you're eligible is to and to get this funding and all the others that will go through later is an OT would provide a functional capacity assessment. So there are really good person to lean on and ask for advice for your individual personal circumstances but then also support coordinator. But some top level things to think about is your disability provide extreme functional impairment to the individual as well.
Does it provide, value for money? Um they do ask it questions like that. So potentially think about the ceiling host. Just putting a ceiling hoist in may provide great value for money cause you've required less support. You don't need 2 to one support for transfers and things like that.
So there are a number of things, that they look for in in that criteria as well. Yeah, no worries. And we'll move on to the other types now. So you mentioned supported independent living in there. Do you wanna let us know? Obviously that's a very different to SDA. Do you wanna let us know that it's all about? Yeah. So that's. Yeah, go over to the support side of things as well. So this is when I talk about SIL, it's talking about support workers and providing support to live independently.
So thinking about the criteria for this one as well, like do you qualify for it as well? The first one is you need 8 hours of support today and when we talk about 8 hours of support a day, we need to think about support to live independently. Whether it's providing a little bit of support in the say you're living at home, bit of support in the morning, to support you to get out of the out of the house, that's still support and we need to factor all that in or having someone there overnight to provide support as well. So all those things come into this as well and it may be a ratio of support as well. It may not be 1 to one all the time, but it's just 8 hours of support a day to live independently.
And once you you go through that, that's kind of like one of the big criteria is to getting this funding as well. But then this funding also is just for in the home. So don't think about if I get this funding, it's going to impact essentially me going to work or my OT or what other things you may do. Community participation is a good one. It's just support in the home to live independently as well. And you'll have one provider who provides you the support to do that as well. They'll provide you, yeah, your support and a roster of care.
So you as a person with disability would understand what they are going to provide you and you have that really clear expectation around support as well. And as I said before, it may be a ratio at some of the day, parts of the day. So overnight it may be a ratio of say 1:00 to 4:00, but then during the morning you need a bit more support and it could turn to 1:00 to 1:00. So it is flexible in that regards, but there's a really clear expectation between person with disability and provider around that as well. In terms of this, as I mentioned the ratio that means you can live by yourself, have one to one support for all, all the support you need, but you also may live with other people um as well whether that's living within a group setting in a group home.
But you also there are some really creative ways that people do this and kind of within the SDA part that I work in there we have apartments and people share supports within the building. So there is on site staff but you're sharing with people within the building as well. But you get your own home at the end of the day. You're on your own apartment in someone's, not in there all the time as well. So that's kind of a thing to think about is, um, yeah. Do you want to live alone or with others or live with an apartment complex as well? And yeah, this funding, and I'll get on to ILO a bit later, but there isn't like a cap in terms of the funding on this. I will talk about ILO. There is a cap to the amount of funding as well. So that is still, it can look in lots of different ways and support you to live independently.
Yeah. As well, there's lots of providers with different models out there as well. So it's not a one size fits all within the market. There are providers who will approach and work with people in different ways. OK. Yep. So just like SDA, it's sort of very individualised to a person's needs. And it sounds like the main difference between that and sort of just general core funding that people would use for a support worker is mainly that it's in the home and it's sort of more structured in that it's one provider, not like potentially multiple different providers. Yeah, Which knowing exactly. Yeah, which gives the person with ability the expectations that's been set that you will be getting support at these times.
If a worker cancels, the provider will work to find an alternative support worker to provide you that support as well. So you don't go with that support where, yeah, maybe core supports you. You're only using one person if they don't turn up there, there's no backup mechanism set up for you as well, so it makes it a little bit easier. Probably Participant's point of view in some circumstances. Yep, Yep. OK, so let's move on.
Through individualised living options then ILO. You did mention it there, but what is that one all about? Yeah. So that one is a bit newer on the NDIS and a bit different to SIL, but it is designed to support people to live independently. In a similar way ILO is broken up into two stages they call it, they've got stage one and stage two. The easiest way I like to think Sage one called exploration and design. The theory side I I think of it as and then you have the practical side of moving out into stage two funding as well.
So in stage one it's just thinking about moving out to live independently and the DS will give you some funding. Yeah for the exploration and design it'll be between 30 and 100 hours depending on the individual and that support is to explore how you would want to live independently as well. There's four way provider would help you with that like who would you. So there's probably 2. There's a few different people you could reach out to support with that.
A lot of people would support coordinators use their support coordinator to provide that. It's funded at the exact same rate of support coordination as well. So UH aligns nicely to people with that. But then also there are a number of other providers out there providing guidance around this because you have to write a form at the end of the day as well.
as well. So just depending on where people are finding someone potentially local to be able to do this or external online to be able to write this report and guide you through it. They're the types of people out there to support you with this as well. So they would work with you to go through the four options. There are four options they kind of say, but again you can be flexible around this as well. So you can live with a flatmate. You may want to live with another person with disability, and that could be a friend or something like that. Um. You may live with a host family that's moving into someone else's place to get the support. Um,
So it could be in a granny flat. And then you may want to live alone as well. So at the end of the day you'll have done all this theory, exploring how you would like to live independently and then at the end of the day you'll kind of have a roster. It's called a service proposal is the NDIS term. But you'll have an understanding of how you want to live independently, the support you need to live independently. And then you would go to the NDIS asking for funding to support you to do the practical side of moving out to live independently.
And I think I talked about with the sill that that kind of doesn't have a cap, but within IO you'll be getting 105 to $230,000 per year of support to live independently. So some people, um, have support needs that exceed essentially $230,000 then that therefore, if that is the case, it wouldn't be the right situation for you to go down this because you will go without some support. Yeah. And we don't want people to go without support as well. We want people to get the support they need to live independently in the way that works for them. But at the end of the day, we don't want people to be going with too little.
Yeah, of course. Yeah. So, yeah, talking about the funding there, Chris, I might just jump to you now from a plan manager's perspective, when people have these different types of home living supports in their plan, what does that actually look like and how do people go about using it? And I suppose what are the locations around that and the practical side of it? Yeah. Well, it's interesting because this is something that's kind of where in the middle of a little bit of a change at the moment as we've kind of seen the implementation of the NDIS's new business system which is pace. And I think the broader intention of that introduction of PACE is to simplify some of these things.
As for those of you that have kind of been in the space for awhile would know sometimes the way some of these supports are included in the plan particularly the kind of more support, the less bricks and mortar components could be can be very confusing. So really in pace what you're seeing now is that there is a budget within the core budget called home and living and really that encompasses a lot of the sort of support pieces that that Pats just talked about. So encompasses you supported independent living, it encompasses your ILO and then a range of other I guess supports there And that kind of sits us as an aside to those other kind of more standard assistance with daily living supports that someone might access now as is current the actual bricks and mortar component that Pat's spoken about.
So the SDA that continues to sit in a specialised capital budget which is quite inflexible in the way that it can be used, that funding is there for a specific purpose. Um, now probably the one thing I would just mention in in kind of the background of pace at the moment is the pace does represent a little bit of a change. And as with many changes, what tends to happen is people can make mistakes from time to time. So I think just from the perspective of someone who's receiving a plan, it's very important to check that if you do have a home, home and living budget that you are sorry pace.
I can see a question Pace with a question mark. I'm not actually sure what the acronym even means. It's that convoluted. But basically the NDIS describe it as their new computer system and what it what it means is it's kind of it's the way the India build plans and it's the way they engage with providers. But you will notice since they have started implementing this change that a few things look a little bit different.
You know the layout of support categories being one of those things. But yeah, I would just really, um, kind of caution people to actually check those budgets and make sure you have the funding in the right places. And really a good example of this is that the sill budget, so the supported independent living that Pats talked about, that's actually shifted from assistance with daily life into the home and living budget. So we do see some examples where the planners kind of put whole bunch of funding in assistance with daily living um and the clients you know trying to access kind of self supports and it makes a claiming a little bit difficult. So just making or doing that check when you get your plan is something that's really worthwhile doing.
Yeah, absolutely. Making sure it's in the right category and does it state very clearly in the plans like this needs to be used for X or are you finding that in place plants. It's a funny thing you say that the home and living budget is, is actually quite generic and the way it's described in a clients plan. I've actually found that plans prior to Pace have a lot more specific descriptions about the way clients will access supports. Pace tends to provide a specific description which from a plan management perspective is not particularly helpful cause sometimes you might pick up a plan, see a dollar value and you won't know whether or not that funding is whether or not it's been assigned for another support like residential care or medium term accommodation.
So yeah, I think it really just kind of goes to show that it's important. I kinda check where things are going. And yeah, and for any providers out there, checking, checking with your participant to ensure that they can provide you with that information about, you know, why the, why the funding is in that home and living budget. Yeah, make sure that those invoices can go through so that not only the planner gets paid, but the participant has a support they need as well. It's very important. So good, good to remember that the NDIS don't always get it right. So make sure that you're checking these things yourself. Yeah.
Sorry, we did talk a little bit about eligibility and stuff before. But Pat, I might just get you to talk us through the process a little bit more about how to apply for these different types of supports. So you did put a couple of scenarios together. So we could use those to sort of have a look through the steps, you know, what the first steps are to figure out what might be the best option for someone and then how they go about it. So I'm just going to pop up with one of your scenarios here and we can have a chat through this one. Awesome. I think also with these scenarios and stuff, it's always good for people to go to someone and say what they want. Because if you go to someone and say this is what I want, how do we work towards it?
They may not be able to work towards it in the perfect way that you want, but they may be able to say we can do this and that and that may be able to work for you instead of going with without anything as well. Yeah, that's a really good point. I think it's always good to reverse engineer it as well. Like how do we get to the finish line within the complete the questions open of how you get to that finish line. I guess explore all the options. Yeah. So yeah I thought this example may um help people to be able to go through it as well. But if people wanna chat about their own personal circumstances after or someone elses, I'm happy to chat through this as well. But yeah, this is just an example of someone who has an acquired disability with Ms and the MS has progressed to the point where they need a lot more support, um, to live independently as well.
So they wanna stay together as a family unit. That's the first thing that's super important to them. Um, they've got a place at the moment, but it's actually not working. Poor them, because they're limited in where they can go. So there's probably going to be some stairs or a shower lip or a bath or something like that and that makes it a little bit harder for someone to navigate this as well.
And then they need a hoist and some other things as well. So some of those things are in the SDA space are telling me that they're at the start of their journey because they're not an accessible home, but they're probably gonna be going down the SDA path for this as well. So the first thing is gonna be looking at and with all these is the home and living form to support um with the NDIS giving you the additional funding for this. So I would be doing the home and living form with the guidance and the support of someone who knows the NDIS language, lingo, whatever you wanna call it really well because it's super important to make sure the writing aligns to the NDIS operational guidelines, the NDIS rules and so forth.
So you've gotta start the home and living form and you'll also need evidence. Evidence comes in the form of a functional capacity Assessment with an OT as well and I would be submitting depending on your situation. We don't know with this one is when. When's the plan review? Can you wait for a plan review? Is the plan review in a month's time or is good to time it with those things? Or do you want to submit it outside of a plan review for a change of circumstances as well? And you would be asking then for for that one family staying, whether I wanna a house or an apartment where we can live together.
A group home is probably not the best place for a family to all be and may not be able to work. So you're looking for a multiple bedroom house or a multiple bedroom apartment. There are quite a few like 2 bed apartments or three bed apartments available to people and making sure that's written in the form. And then on the other side you would be looking at the support side of things as well. But that's how I would start, to get the ball rolling with this. And then once you submit all that to the NDIS
start having a little bit of a look, um desktop research around what places are out there chatting to providers as well to see what they can do to support you to live independently.
You may need a quote that can come back with. They'll be able to provide that, but it'll also give you an understanding of what's out there in the market instead of waiting. Because it does take awhile unfortunately. And if you're waiting again afterwards to find a place like it just slows it all down. I'm I can just keep the ball going be really transparent with the provider and hopefully you'll be able to get some support from them. To what's available what could be coming available to people do come and go as well. So that's how I would look at that person from an SDA point of view. Um and yeah just listen to their story and then let's push forward of how can we make this work.
You said that it might take a while. Do you have any idea of a rough kind of timeline? And I was gonna be different for everyone, but gonna be different ballpark uh, had this conversation earlier this week with someone um as well. The NDIS quarterly report said all home and living decision, not just SDA, SDA, CL, IO, or the acronyms we've talked about within 90 days. About 78% of people have been getting responses within those 90 days as well. Obviously, if you're in a massive change of circumstances, um, things can get escalated. But that's kind of the, the stock standard thing that I've just seen from the NDIS.
Yeah, OK. And sorry, my Internet dropped out just for a second there, So I might have missed a little bit. Obviously my screen disappeared. But um, just with the evidence you mentioned, you know, functional capacity assessment, all that kind of thing, presumably people would have had one of those done to, you know, get approved onto the NDIS. Is it worth getting another assessment done or only for needs have changed? Is it like a specific kind of housing? Yeah, assessment, yeah.
Evidence has to be current. Whether you have a disability that doesn't change or you gotta do generative one in some circumstances you need one from within the last 12 months. Whether it's going to OT and saying can we just update this or starting from scratch, obviously to get onto the NDIS, you may have had one done previously and it will be a bit different. But this one is going to be focusing on, I need specialised disability accommodation.
So we need one that reflects your current needs and your change of circumstance as well. Like whether it's moving out of home for the first time, changing where you're living or moving into SDA, you're gonna need to make sure you're telling the DS what's current and around that as well. Yeah, fantastic. And along with that kind of evidence, do you think like a impact statement or a career statement, things like that would help as well? Definitely. I think all evidence is good.
It's out there. So yeah you could have in this one you could have the partner write the impact that it's having on them and their relationship because they're gonna have to provide so much support and and potentially in the dangerous way. Um as well. But then also um you could write one from one's own perspective or your support workers who are providing support and anyone else in your your, your network could be able to provide one as well. Yeah, perfect. So I guess anything that you have that kind of shows your needs within the home specifically and maybe also what things you've tried but haven't worked, that would be an important part of it, right? Yeah, coming back to that whole value for money thing that we talked about right at the top there, I guess.
Yeah showing that you tried different things because that's something they look at with all different types of supports as well. Now I'm gonna try and flash up this second scenario, I've been if, if we want, I can just read it. Yeah, sure. I don't want her to drop out again. No worries at all. So, the second scenario is more on the support side of things.
So the first one was on the bricks and mortar. Um, but yeah, it's about a 35 year old with a psychosocial disability, Um. They are currently living in a civil group home and now they've come to the point where they want to live alone. They don't want to live in that group setting. They need support overnight as well as in the morning and evening. They got to work four days per four days a week and then on the other days they are doing community participation as well. So looking at this other example, um, you can kind of see in there that there it they've got self funding because they're in a seal group home already. So it's changing the funding that they they want at the moment. Yeah, But again, you're gonna need new evidence and things like that.
You wanna live alone? This is now working to find a provider who will support you to do that as well. There's a number out there who provide studio apartments to individuals with disability and then they get to live alone. But the support on site, kind of like the SDA apartment I talked about before, but it's just their standard studio apartments. Someone may be able to enter the private they're working four days a week. I'm not sure what they're doing. They may be able to afford private rentals within the market as well. They could go down the social and Community Housing path when you're going down those paths though in this situation as well, it can be hard to advocate for one to one support for all those times that you need it overnight and for a few hours in the morning and evening as well.
So it is a bit harder with the evidence side of things there because you really got to show why you need this as well. But then like as I said, if you go down that studio apartment route, it could be the same funding. It's working to find a provider that provides you the support to live the live in the way that you want to live as well.
In terms of that person, yeah, definitely. And like that person could look at IO but if they're needing a lot of active support overnight it may exceed that um plan or their plan may already have more value, higher value than the 230. So therefore sticking with their self funding could be better for them as well. So that person, yeah, it would be a change of circumstance because they're not at the very start of their journey of I want to move out of home for the first time or I I need self funding for the first time they've got it.
It's just changing it to work for a different provider. Yep. The dream scenario would be you don't even need to go to the NDIS. It's just changing provider that works for you. Yeah. So how can participants know whether a provider is going to be a good fit for them. Do you have any sort of quick tips on what to look for? Obviously, yeah different for everyone, but you know, yeah it's different for everyone and the support you need is very different. The thing that I I would say is just call the provider or or or work with your support coordinator around that. Word of mouths are really good thing as well like if you've got other people, I know everyone's different in their support needs are different but if you know someone who may be using a provider in an area you wanna live word of mouth if they're saying good things like definitely it's much.
I think it's best hearing from someone who is using their services, but call the provider is always the best way to go. I think definitely, but call the provider have a chat to them, tell them what you're looking for, see if they can provide you the support, um and if they've got accommodation in the area. The biggest thing is yeah, is that provider in your in the area geographically that you wanna work, live, not work. So yeah, I would just give them a call, chat about it and then go from there. And then if you wanna go, definitely go have a tour, make sure you, you light the place the the house or apartment will work for you and and just be really transparent and open on on what you expect from them and hearing what they they kind of expect from you. Um, in terms of yet how they want to operate.
Yeah. Need to work for both sides. Yeah. Yeah, of course. Now um, not everybody is going to be eligible for all of these supports or there might be a period of time where people have applied or getting their evidence together and sort of don't have in their plan yet but they might have other supports that they can use. So Chris, I just want to ask your perspective. What other ways can people use their NDIS plans in that sort of in between time to help them live independently that isn't necessarily SDA or ILO that kind of thing.
Yeah, I think there are, there are a lot of really good options and I think what I'll do is sort of in keeping with what we've already discussed talk about um you know the physical, so the bricks and mortar so to speak and then and then the support. So in terms of that, I guess the, the physical supports that you might have, people can utilise their assistive technology budgets pretty flexibly within their plans. And it's probably worth mentioning that whilst there is a specific assistive technology budget in the plan, you can use your core budget to purchase assistive technologies under $1500. And that's really important because you know when you're working with an OT or another professional, there's actually a lot that you can do to improve the accessibility of your home. So that's something that I think I would kind of, I would definitely put out there. The other one as well is just in terms of home modifications.
So obviously, there's a specific kind of budget for home modifications. That and a process for that that you can kind of work through again when you get sort of an assessment. And I won't go too deeply into that, but the other thing I mentioned again under that $1500 mark is you do have the opportunity to kind of do home adaptations. So really though, those are just kind of I guess lower value simple things that don't kind of really impact the structural integrity of the home that could again really improve your experience and accessibility within the home.
So lots of things that we see people see people doing are implementing simple home automation sort of programmes and a range of other supports and they often do that out of their consumables, budget, consumables obviously belonging to the core budget which is which is the most, the most flexible. So that's a really good option for most people because most people do have a core
budget within their plan. Yeah, moving on to the actual support space itself, you can again use the assistance with daily living budget within your plan, which sits within core to sort of get assistance from a support worker. And I won't go into too much detail about that because most people are pretty familiar with those sorts of those sorts of supports.
I think really just above that there are other you know small bits and pieces that that you can you cannot access in the support space in in the short term. So there is medium term accommodation which is typically for people that are in transition between 1 space to another. So that's definitely an option for example, if you're having an STA build that's occurring. And then there's also things like short term accommodation, which you know can be really helpful for I guess helping people get out of their, their current environment for a little bit of respite or to to try new things again sort of that sitting on the support side of things.
So there's really a lot of flexibility within the core budget to kind of explore some solutions that will help make your make your home and your supports a little bit more or specifically. Yeah, your home environment a little bit more more livable if you're not necessarily eligible for either SDA or SIL. Yeah, Yeah. And I guess going back to the evidence that we were talking about before showing that you've tried these things first as well, that might be helpful step towards, you know, if you might be eligible later on for SDA or something like that. Showing that you've tried all these other steps, you know, putting in the home automation stuff, those small little home mods and things like that, that would be really good way to show that you're trying these value for money options as well, first, wouldn't it? Yeah.
And probably just one final point I'll make on that is, you know, given like let's say the scenario that Pat talked about, you know, with the participant, with MS, there are a lot of people that have, you know, degenerative disabilities that are impacting them slowly over time or quickly. So sometimes I guess you need that ability to be able to act quickly and then that support that you've put in place just isn't gonna cut it anymore. So I think, yeah, it's really about using that and demonstrating, yeah, you're doing your best to kind of use the lowest impact option first before you know you kind of transition to SIL or SDA.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Fantastic. Alrighty. Well, I have seen a few questions pop up, so we might just see. Yvette if you've got any questions for Pat and Chris, gosh, yes, there are some questions. Cool. I'll try. You may have covered some of the information, but I'll obviously just go through these questions so that we can make sure that that information is answered comprehensively.
Chris, you just addressed home modification. So there was a question about, does ILO funding cover home modifications to existing properties? And I would assume from your response that node that it's that comes from, uh, can you elaborate on, yes, I believe that that comes from specifically from the home modifications budget. So yeah, yeah, yeah, hello. Supports will really only be dealing with scoping that arrangement and then and then implementing it. So then that would then trigger a change of circumstance or request for housing home and living supports and then that would then no request for home modifications. Thank you. Correct. Yeah, yes. And go through that process. Great. Thank you
Uh Pat, I think this would be best directed to you. Um, can SDA funding include funding contributing towards building a new dwelling for, say, a family member that's a family would like to build a specialist house?
Yeah, a great question. And yeah, it's one that comes up quite often in terms of, yeah, can it help me Going forward, the NDIS won't fund for the building to go out. There's a number of people who are investors in this space and stuff. They may be able to work with you around that because then they'll be able to get the SDA payment, whether it's you or them, but they won't pay for the upfront cost for developing this as well. But then, yeah, there are people who will support with that as well. So yeah, it's not, you only get the payment once it comes, you're living in that place and that goes to whoever that provider is.
So, yeah. Goes directly to a provider, not necessarily to the people requiring the, the housing. Yeah, for sure. Cool. And then on that question, this might be a bit of a tricky one, Pat, but I have heard of families. Obviously, you'd have to be in, you know, the financial position to do it, but sort of become a provider themselves, purchase the house and make that SDA for their family member. I've ever seen that happen. I've heard of that. Yeah, it can happen. The one thing with SDA payments, they must go to a registered provider. They're in. This can't be self or plan manage. It's always agency managed. So you need to register provider to be able to do that as well. So there's a lot of back end work involved. There's a lot of back end work. Yeah, Yeah, back end work. It's possible, but it requires significant investment. Yeah.
Pat, going back to the different SDA options available to people, are they, are each of these options graded according to those acronyms? And how would a participant know what they're looking for if they're say looking for their SDA specific options like are those does that come up in the marketing for each of the dwellings or Yeah so the grading action we're talking about the value of it or the cost accessibility or yeah uhhh I didn't go through them in I don't think definitive order um other obviously because of someone with robust and HPS they're very different support needs as well. I think in terms of the value if we is that what we wanna go through is no in terms of sorry in terms of its needs like so if someone is so a company is advertising an SDA option and then like I need high accessibility.
So is that are they. Yeah they listed in terms of those categories. They will also list them in terms of what type of dwelling. So I mentioned the house the Yep group homes and apartments in and then so on they are they should be listed and then the location will be SDA. I didn't talk about the nitty gritty of it that they're also factored in by location of where you live like a general area. They're not down to you straight or anything, but you'll just need all that. And then at the end of the day that spits out the value that they, the NDIA says it's worth. And then the provider, um, will be looking for something to match that as well.
Awesome. Um. A big question that got a lot of likes and the various variations of the same question, uh, throughout the chat was, what professionals can you lean on to get access to home and living supports in like specific housing supports? Because you obviously you referenced an OT functional assessment, but say someone doesn't necessarily have funding for it in their current plan, like how would they go about accessing. Yeah, it's a it's a good question that comes up quite often. The functional capacity assessment.
Um, I have heard people having other people write them who aren't an OT like a physio sort of. Yeah, yeah, I haven't seen it done, but I've just heard of that um from the NDIS point of view as well. There's probably a few things that you can look at. Um, if you're in the situation where you don't have allocated funding for this because you may not have thought nine months ago you needed this funding, which is totally understandable. Some if you're in a in a position where you're funding is flexible depending on client management and allocation of funding and you have a little bit leftover you could use that um depending on aligning to your goals or not.
Or it would be going for a change of circumstance to get that put in to your plan which takes a bit longer and unfortunately slows the whole process down as well. The one thing I probably yeah Speaking of plans didn't mention as well you need to get these funding. You do need the goal in your plan of I want to move to live independently as well. So like everything the NDIS won't fund unless alliance to your goals. Yeah. So I think, yeah they're probably the two ways to go. Um, about that. The third one is, yeah, out of out of pocket yourself through private funding as well. But I would, I would suggest getting the NDIS to pay for it from either a little bit of surplus funding if it aligns to your goals and your plans flexible or going for the change of circumstances as well. And you can change your goals at any time. Yeah as well. So just call up the NDIS. I wanna add this goal. Yeah, yeah, they should be able to do a plan variation to add that.
Yeah. In your breakdown of the ILO supports, there was comments about living with like in Group homes and with a flatmate. Can the same setup be used for participant to live with family members? Yeah, it's it's uh probably a case by case question around how you see that the NDIS won't pay you, um unless there's, written permission from the provider when it's a family member without written permission from the NFL to do that. I've only seen it in a very small number of circumstance and I'm sure Chris is the same with seeing that in limited circumstances.
So you can live with a family member and get the support. It would just be unpaid support, so it would be informal supports as well. So you can live with a flatmate who happens to be your cousin, for example. That cousin may provide a little bit of informal support as well, unless there is that written permission from the NDIS agreeing to pay for a family member to do it. But saying you're an adult child and you live with one or the other of your parents and you bring in supports to that situation. So like, yeah, I would say then it's not really an issue because you haven't moved out, it's just core support dropping into your parents home as well.
But yeah, in in those circumstances again, the parents, I mean your parents could be living with you. I mean we don't know. Yeah, yeah, paying the rent. So yeah, but for sure. OK, cool. Um, bit of a, uh, opposite side of the coin. Can all support worker businesses provide still or are there conditions involved with being a sill provider? Yeah, it's a great question. Um very topical at the moment with registration and registration um getting looked out at the moment it is, yeah.
So in terms of of it it, it boils down to a few things you'll plan how is it managed is it I and I haven't seen many not agency managed, some are planned, very few are self managing those regards. So it would depend on that because depending on how you're funding is managed, depends on who you can use as is your provider as well.
But in terms of thinking of the support worker provider, if I if you wouldn't use one person like you wouldn't use, um someone down the road who just has an ABN and they just work by themselves. Yeah, there's one person because you don't have that backup if they go on holidays they fall sick, things like that. You would want to work with an organisation who has a really good setup, numbers, number of workers, good procedures if something goes. So I would look for a provider who has all those things. A lot of the time. Uh, still providers, if not all the time are registered. Yeah, as well.
Chris, a question for you. How does a participant know that they have home and living funding and specific funding say for SDA or SIL? Like how was actually displayed? And a follow on question to that, apparently a participant had some housing funding in a pre pace plan, but then when was transitioned to pace, it's not as clear as to whether it still exists or it's just kind of hidden in or not necessarily hidden, but it's just kind of accumulated into a budget somewhere. Yeah, somewhat of a difficult question to ask. It's actually just because I can really only speak for what's viewable on the plan and what I've kind of I guess gauged from having chats with our with our clients in terms of the plan and I'll post something in the in the chat so people can look at it. It's very plain description um of what's actually what's actually funded.
I'm gonna read it out to you now basically just says home and living supports can help you to live as independently as possible. They build your skills with things like household tasks and personal care and if you get ILO, if you get sill that's probably what's gonna be in your plan. So really what I guess I've sort of heard so far from our discussions with participants is often when you are kind of getting this funding, putting your plan, often the plan is gonna kind of follow up with an email to talk to you about some of the supports they've included in your plan and a little bit more detail.
So I think it's really critical that you do look out for that email if it comes and if it doesn't come, then please reach out to your planner and ask for that information. Because if it's not in there, then really you do kind of open yourself up to those situations where you know you've used it for one thing, but maybe you kind of had intended to use it for something else that was really important and we don't, we don't want to see people that happening to people. So I think probably, yeah. In short the description and the plan is quite limited now.
So you know, it's really kind of important that you do ask the questions as you go through the planning phase. For that specific situation where the person isn't sure, I would probably just recommend reaching out directly to the planner. I know there's really long wait times at the moment, but if you kinda can't infer it directly by looking at the dollar value and saying, hey look, I can see that $50,000 has moved into the home and Living budget and you know it's probably for this. Then, it's probably just worth worthwhile touching base with the planner to confirm that's the case.
I think I've just been given a little bit more information in regards to that question. So the example I provided me SA not in the PACE plan. The support query rang. The Indian was advised it was approved in the system but not shown in the PACE plan. So that yeah, I mean this is, this is information to me I think and I every time I kind of hear bits and pieces like this I'm it's yeah, it's kind of interesting. So I'll paste that picture in the chat so you can see what we what we see. But it's effectively a pretty cookie cutter description that's written through all plans. So as I said, I've kind of heard bits and pieces from participants where they're getting a bit more information than that, but it seems to be very ad hoc and I've not seen anything really consistent.
So yeah, it's, it's something obviously we've kind of raised with the NDA is potentially an issue for participants and also us in terms of how we kind of ensure that claims are submitted in accordance with plan. But that just kinda seems to be the way it's looking at the moment that seems needed every day. Yay. Like it seems extra confusing to have it approved and there, but not have anything at all on the plan. That's just doesn't make any sense. That does not compute.
I know we're getting very close to the end of time, I was given a really specific question about a specific participant, um circumstance with family. Which part I might actually ask for you to directly respond to that question because I don't think we'll have time to properly address that right now. But one question I do want to ask potentially to both of you, have you seen psychosocial disabilities be approved for home and living supports and specifically housing supports?
I think there's two parts to the question there, like there's the housing and the support side of things. Yeah, as well. And I have seen people with, yes, psychosocial disability get approved for all three ways. You can live independently on that support side of things as well in terms of the psychosocial requiring SDA. I've heard of it and know a number of people who have gotten it. I think it's just making sure that your disability aligns to the NDIS operational guidelines that then that's most boring way to put it. Yeah as well. And I don't know, Chris, if you've seen anything different.
Yeah. I mean, I guess I probably give a similar sort of answer. Um, theoretically, yes. I probably just don't have. Um, yeah. Enough. There's a functional needs. If there's a functional need for specific housing, then there's nothing to say that it's not appropriate to. Yeah. And whether you've got multiple disabilities as well, like you may have a physical disability and psychosocial disability or you may just have psychosocial, But then potentially, yeah. Does it make the requirements well? I'm happy to chat about personal circumstances as well.
As I said, um, if people want to go through those things as well and find out more because it's very hard to make it offer. Yeah, general diagnosis just, yes, of course. And just the final one I guess is a good way to finish this all up is general comment that SDA housing has not necessarily been of top tier level for quite a while and there's some new ones being built obviously because Vertika is one of those companies doing that part housing hub is, is this the new realestate.com for disability housing? And is that the best way to find SDA housing?
Yeah. Uh, so yeah, it's one of those ones. SDA buildings have to be new. The quality, you mentioned hasn't been good. I think it all depends on what you're looking for as well. I know people are always trying to improve from if they build multiple onwards to get better quality as well. But I think also when you think about quality, you've also got to think about quality with other things as well. For example, we think about quality is not just the apartment, it's the location as well. It's one of the things a lot of people forget about, but you want to live in a quality area and when I'm talking about that, it's access to transport shops and amenities nearby, whether that is hospital facilities as well. Um, so that's that in terms of what you're referring to is the best quality. Getting snapped up. Get snapped up. Really quickly that happens whether you have disability or not like trying to get the best.
It happens. But I think the best thing to do and if this person wants and don't know their name, um wants to chat about it. If we don't have properties in the area, I'll see if I can refer you to someone to be able to get you in with someone and get you get you on the list. The other thing is find a developer who's building can be the situation as well because like yeah, Housing Hubs, one website that has a number of things on there. There are a number of other ones as well that you can reach out to, to be able to, you know, find those ones as well. But I think, yeah, the big thing is, connect with them.
Maybe get your ducks in a row prior to that happening so you know what you have available to you so that you're ready to hit the go button when it's in front of you. Yeah, I think that's definitely one of the things that's how quickly you wanna move. Like if you need to move tomorrow, there's probably not a huge amount of supply to move that quickly. But if you're looking to move towards the future, there are some really cool things out there that people are doing in the sector to build quality and for people. There's a thing that people will hear about pro design, working with people with disability.
Find a home that works for them and then that gives you that quality that you may be looking for as well. Um, and it depends on category. There's so many factors that could talk about it for a while. Amazing. Thanks guys. I'll check that now. Thanks, Yvette, and thanks everyone for your questions. So we've gone a little bit overtime there. But if you have any more questions, feel free to jump in the Kinora community and pop them in there or like Pat said, he's happy to answer any specific questions. I'm sure Chris would be as well. So just let us know if you got any other questions and we'll try and get answers for you.
Thank you so much for joining us today Pat and Chris. Your insights and info is just incredibly helpful. So really thank you for being here. Thank you everyone else for being here today as we said near the start we’ll send an email with the video plus all of the links that Yvette has been sending in the chat and everything else we think might be helpful for you on your housing journey. So look out for that later in the week. I'm Erin, that was Yvette in the chat. And today we've been joined by Patrick Neary from Vertika and Chris Molloy from my Plan Manager. Thanks again everyone and hope to see you in Kinora soon.
