Our Journey

For the first 5 years of the NDIS, Caroline focused her energy on helping the community build its capacity to self-manage NDIS funding and implement self-directed supports, including authoring the NDIA’s first set of resources for self-management. 

After several years it became apparent that the major difficulty families were reporting was preparing for and managing Planning Meetings. The stress that was being created through the planning process was having a detrimental impact on the community. People were seeking support to build their capacity to engage with the NDIS and there were very few options in the marketplace that could assist people effectively prepare for and conduct planning meetings.

During 2020 planHELP developed a model of practice to support the NDIS community successfully prepare for and conduct Plan Reviews. After trialling the model for 6 months the consistent results achieved were so significant that the trial was ended and planHELP came to market to support families navigate this difficult space.  Over the last 3 years planHELP has supported hundreds of families through their NDIS journey to achieve outcomes that were reflective of their support needs.

Through combining skillsets developed both inside the NDIA and in the self-management community, planHELP is able to help families build an evidence base that is reflective of their disability related support needs that is designed to assist NDIS delegates make reasonable and necessary funding decisions. It became apparent that the anxiety that was being generated in the lead-up to engaging with the NDIA was having a negative impact on people’s ability to effectively message their needs to delegates and partner organisations.

With the combined skillsets of planHELP’s key consultants, customers were able to gain a stronger understanding of the expectations of the NDIA, gather evidence that was fit for purpose and be supported through a Planning Meeting by experts thereby reducing anxiety while ensuring that support needs were effectively messaged to the NDIA or partner organisation.

PlanHELPS goal is to support customers effectively manage this in a way that reduces risk and anxiety and maximises opportunity to message reasonable and necessary support needs which are supported by appropriate evidence and are within the scope and intent of the scheme. 

As planHELP’s request for support increased, we have moved back into the training space as the most effective way to support as many people as possible to build their capacity to get the most out of the NDIS.  We work with Participants, Allied Health Professionals and Providers with this goal in mind. planHELP have a number of options available to support the community achieve this goal including individualised support, group based and online training options.