The Transition to New Framework Planning and 3-month Funding Periods

• Budget Stability: Funds are protected from early depletion, ensuring continuous access to care throughout the year.
• Clearer Guidelines: Participants will receive explicit information regarding what the NDIS funds and does not fund, reducing confusion during spending.
• Gradual Rollout: Current plan structures remain unchanged until the next scheduled plan reassessment or review.

• Predictable Cash Flow: Pro: Shorter funding periods allow for more consistent, recurring service bookings and predictable revenue streams. Con: Shorter funding periods have not been adequately apportioned to cater for times when the disability is more severe or needs more intervention, ie: cyclic symptoms or 'flare ups'. It also fails to take into consideration the higher rates for workers during public holiday heavy times of the year. 
• Administrative Vigilance: Plan managers and support coordinators must monitor individual category caps closely to avoid service delivery disruptions when a 3-month cap is reached. This will effectively mean more hours of work for the support coordinator and plan manager while both of these service  providers have had their rates frozen and support coordinators have seen an up to 50% cut in hours to each plan (so far). This means that the providers the NDIS relies on the most to administrate these changes are being treated the most poorly.
• Shifted Conversations: Service agreements must align precisely with these 3-month funding increments rather than annualized expectations. Another burden on support coordinators and plan managers is to explain to each service provider how to draft a new service agreement with each funding period individually itemised to comply with new conditions. 
• Participants and their nominees: Participants and their family members and nominees are finding it very difficult to understand the changes and how they will work, including how it will affect their individual plan. Many participants do not have support coordinators and are having to contact the NDIS for explanation and information. There have been numerous reports that those answering the phones cannot assist because they either do not know about the changes or do not understand them. 
• NDIS: The NDIS is hell bent on saving money, seeing fiscal sustainability as the only means of sustaining the sector. Unfortunately this has resulted in a lack of training, bulk redundancies in the agency, high levels of staff dissatisfaction and a high turnover of staff. This is all happening at a time when there is a higher than usual call rate to the 1800 line and the enquiries @ email address. 

At My Virtual Coach, we are very concerned about the impact on the sector of yet another poorly thought out significant change. For this reason, we will ensure online information sessions are available for all participants to reduce expensive time pressure on coordinators and plan managers - and also on the NDIS.