You may think the formation of an NDIS plan is difficult, however, what can be a longer process would be assessing whether this plan is good for you. Plan reviews can be up to 2 years apart, and thus you want to make sure these 2 years are spent wisely on growing yourself and your goals. Particularly, during COVID-19, and the unpredictability of the situation, there have been new initiatives launched. This is in a bid to maintain the stability of following up on your plan. This includes areas such as participant check-ins. This involves a more flexible scheduled time for reviewing your plan approaches that were delivered during the pandemic.
Participant Check-Ins
What should you expect during these participant check-ins? These are the basics such as ensuring that your well-being is as good as it can be. Furthermore, they ensure that you are satisfied with the NDIS supports and various other supports. It is important to remember that there are people there for you. They simply want to make sure that everything is coming along nicely for you, and in the way that you have envisioned things.
The participant check-in usually precedes the plan review, where a date is also arranged for the plan review meeting. It is to confirm your circumstances, as life is everchanging and nothing can be definite from year to year.
Preparing For a Plan Review
Ok. Now you have the date set for the plan review- how do you prepare for this? Ensure that you have an idea of what you want to look over from your previous plan. This could include typing it out in the notes of your phone, or handwritten prompts on sticky notes. Some main pointers when preparing to attend a plan review are inclusive of:
- What worked well in your previous plan and what didn’t. Hence, you can focus on what you will have to change in the future
- Who can help you pursue these goals
- Will NDIS support be required in the near future?
- Any progress towards goals
Goals in Particular… Must Be Realistic!
These goals can be anything that you wish to achieve with NDIS as your biggest supporter! For example, they can range from wanting to travel on public transport unassisted, to wanting to make new friends. These categories, in a broader sense, can be classified as physical, social, or independence-based. You can also categorize your goals as either short, medium, or long-term goals so that you can set a timeline for yourself.
Categories of Good Goals
There are several areas that can make a good NDIS goal. Goals can range from all sorts of things that cover many different aspects of your life so that you don’t have to let your disability get in the way. For example, some aspects include:
With an end goal in mind, this can create feelings of anticipation and optimism. As opposed to stressing over the support you will require, rather picture how your life will be once you have achieved this with the unconditional support of NDIS. For example, rather than setting a goal of, ‘get into physical therapy,’ instead, set the goal as ‘walking comfortably again.’
Go through your daily life, and think about what areas you want to better- and how this is in relation to your disability.
Everyone loves independence, which is why this goal mindset is so effective. Building goals in this category can aid you in being less reliant on others. Instead, they encourage you to participate in more social activities. This in itself is one of the key pointers of the NDIS; getting back in the community, and also contributing what you can.
These goals are the best because they allow you to focus on what you truly desire for yourself. These do not have to be directly related to your disability, but rather what you see yourself doing in life regardless. For example, goals such as learning to play the piano, or wanting to visit a family member interstate. Whatever it is, the NDIS know it is extremely important to you and will do their best to provide!
We don’t disagree that goals should be specific, however the more general a goal is on its theme, the more flexible funding can be. If this is confusing, an example would be that ‘learning to express creativitys’ would allow for higher flexibility than ‘learning how to paint.’
This is All About You!
Don’t hold back on expressing your concerns or questions or anything at all when following up on your NDIS plan. This should be a slightly more critical process than simply just reviewing your plan, as you now need to plan what you want to bring up in the meeting.
