Alecia
Housing and support under the NDIS.
Hello, my name is Alecia Rathbone, and I am from the Housing Hub team, here at Summer Foundation. Before we talk about all of the options available to you, I want to touch on the approach the NDIS takes to all housing. The NDIS is focused on making sure housing connects participants with their local community, and builds independence. It doesn't matter whether housing is funded by the NDIS, or through private rental, or social housing, the NDIS will be focused on making sure the supports they pay for help people to live an ordinary life. For anyone thinking about housing, the NDIS will ask you, how will these new or different housing create an ordinary life? This means the NDIS want to fund supports that help you to live an ordinary life, like everyone who doesn't have a disability in the community.
When it comes to housing and ordinary life can be based on your age and life stage. For example, if you are a person in your forties, it is thought of as ordinary to live alone, or with family, like your spouse or children. The NDIS is shifting the housing models for people with disability, from larger group settings to smaller settings, where people with disability have choice over who to live with, where to live, and what type of housing to live in. The NDIS uses the term 'reasonable and necessary' fairly often. It means that they will only pay for supports in your NDIS plan, if those supports pass the 'reasonable and necessary' test.
For a support to be reasonable and necessary, it must; help you achieve the goals and aspirations that are written in your NDIS plan, get you more connected to your community, either socially or economically, be value for money, especially, if it's priced above the NDIS price guide. Have proof that it's likely to give you real benefit in your life, not be a support that should or can be provided by someone else, like family members, carers, or the community. Not already be funded or provided by another government body, like the health system or the justice system. Simply, for something to pass the 'reasonable and necessary' test, you must need it because of your disability, and it needs to be good value for money.
The NDIS funds supports and services that directly relate to a person's disability. Housing is something that every Australian needs. The NDIS won't fund housing for everyone. The NDIS expects that most participants will access housing through home ownership, private rental, affordable, or social housing, that's provided by the state governments. For a small group of people, approximately 6% of NDIS participants, the NDIS will fund specialist disability accommodation, or SDA for short. This is what we are going to talk about later in this workshop. The NDIS can help access housing through a range of supports that aren't directly about housing. Assistance with daily living, support coordination to find a property, specialist tenancy support to help manage a tenancy, home modifications to modify an existing property. These supports will help a large number of people who have access to housing, but haven't had the support to live independently, or keep their tenancy.
The NDIS may also fund specialist disability accommodation for a very small number of people. It is important to think about other supports first, and then look to SDA, if you need specially designed features in your home, to live independently, safely, and have a more ordinary life. Now, take some time to do the following activities. In your workbook, go to Activity 3, your reasonable and necessary supports. This section asks you questions about the support you need to do your daily tasks, and the support you will need in your home.
When you have finished the workbook activity, go back to the Housing Seeker profile. You open this at the start of the workshop in a separate window. You can now feeling the first two sections of the Housing Seeker profile. The first section covers your personal details, with questions like your name and date of birth, how many hours of support you need each day, how long you can be alone on your own for, and whether you need support to solve problems, organise what you do each day, or pay bills. Once you have done this section, press Next. The second section is called Current Living Arrangements. Here, we will ask you questions about where you live now, what your current housing arrangements are, and when you would like to move. When you have done this, join us for the next chapter about different places you can live.