Accessing the NDIS

Everyone who applies to the NDIS must meet eligibility criteria. These include age, residency and disability requirements. You must also live in an area where the NDIS is being rolled out.

For a person with a psychosocial disability to access the Scheme, they need to have a permanent or likely-to-be permanent disability as a result of their mental health condition. The condition must have a significant impact on their day-to-day life and the person’s ability to participate in the community. It also needs to be likely that the person will need support for the rest of their life.

What supports will the NDIS fund?

For NDIS participants, the scheme will fund supports that assist you to live an ordinary life.

This includes:

• assistance with planning, decision making and household tasks
• assistance to build the skills to live independently and achieve their goals, such as building social relationships, as well as financial management and tenancy management skills

You can choose to access your funded supports in your own home, at a centre or to access community activities.

The terms ‘treatment’ in the mental health system and ‘ongoing functional support for psycho social disability’ (targeted at reducing the impact on a persons’ functional capacity of impairments/s attributable to a psychiatric condition) provided by the NDIS, assist us to better define the respective roles.