Frequently Asked Questions

Specialist disability accommodation is designed for people with an extreme functional impairment, or very high support needs.

Do you have an extreme functional impairment?

This means you have a lot of trouble doing daily tasks on your own or sometimes may not be able to do them at all.

We’ll confirm you have an extreme functional impairment if you need lots of support from someone else to complete daily tasks. This is on top of any assistive technology or other home modifications you have. These daily tasks include:

• Mobility – such as walking, climbing stairs, getting in and out of a bed or a chair, carrying or moving items, and getting out of the house.

• Self-care – such as washing yourself, going to the toilet, getting dressed, eating, drinking, talking and taking medication.

• Self-management – such as housework, following routines, making friends and relationships, maintaining boundaries and managing your behaviour.

Do you have very high support needs?

This means you need a lot of person-to-person support for a significant part of the day. You need this support with you, or you need to be able to get this support straight away. We also need to know that either:

• Your family or friends can’t give you this support or maintain the level of support you need. For example, you might not have enough informal supports, or your usual informal support network can’t support you anymore.

• Specialist disability accommodation will help reduce any safety risks to you or to others around you. For example, if you’ll need help right away to leave your home in an emergency. If you have behaviours of concern that are a safety risk to you or others around you, you’ll need to give us a current behaviour support plan or a restrictive practice plan.

You may also have very high support needs if you have lived in a place like specialist disability accommodation for a long time. This may mean it’s hard to move to other housing options.

Like all supports, we’ll only fund specialist disability accommodation if it meets all the NDIS funding criteria for your disability support needs.

We also need to make sure that funding you for specialist disability accommodation and other supports meets the funding criteria better than other options.

In particular, we need to know specialist disability accommodation:

• helps you pursue your goals

• is effective and beneficial for you

• is value for money

• is most appropriately funded by us

• won’t likely cause harm to you or other people.

Like all homes, there are many ways to build specialist disability accommodation. If you’re eligible for specialist disability accommodation, we need to decide what kind of specialist disability accommodation we’ll fund for you.

We’ll include funding in your plan for:

• a design category – the way the specialist disability accommodation is built to suit your disability support needs

• a building type – such as a house, apartment, or another type of building

We will also ask where you want to live.

If you were living in specialist disability accommodation when you became a participant, you'll still be eligible. We’ll work with you to check what kind of specialist disability accommodation we can fund if you want to move to a different home.

Once we decide what kind of specialist disability accommodation we’ll fund, we’ll work out the specialist disability accommodation budget to include in your plan. To do this, we use the specialist disability accommodation Pricing Arrangements to help us.

Supported independent living is usually funded when you live with other participants and share supports with them.

If you are not sharing your supports with other participants, supported independent living is only one of many support options that may suit you. There may be other home and living options that better suit your needs and preferences.

Like all supports we fund, supported independent living must meet all the NDIS funding criteria (It must not be a type of support the law says the NDIS cant fund or provide and it must meet the reasonable and neccesary criteria). The NDIS also think about what other supports you need in your home, and how these supports will all work together.

For example, they need to know supported independent living is value for money compared to the cost and benefits of other supports. There might be other home and living supports that help you live the way you want to, and offer better value for money than supported independent living.

the NDIS also need to know your home and living supports are most appropriately funded by them. They can’t fund supports that are more appropriately funded by another government or community service.

For example, they can’t fund housing, except for specialist disability accommodation. When we say housing, we mean the building itself, like a house or apartment. Many people buy or rent their own housing. State and territory governments are responsible for helping people with housing. This includes making sure all Australians, including people with disability, have access to accessible, affordable and appropriate housing.

Supported independent living is generally only considered to meet the NDIS funding criteria for people aged 18 or older.

This is because we would usually expect parents to provide the support a child needs to live in the family home. Where a child needs much more support because of their disability than children of the same age, we may be able to fund personal care or other supports .

Check out Our Guideline - Reasonable and necessary supports for more information.

State and territory governments are responsible for children who can’t live in their family home.

If you’re 17, and your goal is to move out of home, we may be able to fund support to explore your home and living options. It’s never too early to start thinking about what this might look like for you in the future.

If so, talk to us about the home and living goals you want to pursue. We can start helping you work out the best option for you, and we may fund support to help you explore your options. Talk to your support coordinator, local area coordinator or planner if you would like more information.