Surviving Stated Supports and Section 44: Navigating Your NDIS Plan in 2025
A no-BS guide to what Stated Supports mean under PACE — and why Section 44 just made them a bigger deal.
Let’s be real — NDIS plans were already confusing enough.
Now, with new rules rolling in throughout this legislation reform, things are getting spicier by the day.
If you’ve ever tried to decode what you can and can’t spend your funding on, or been caught out or just thoroughly confused by a sneaky Stated Support, you’re not alone!!! And this one’s for you.
The introduction of Section 44 means the NDIA will be peeking at how you’ve spent your funding before approving the next one — and if you’ve been a little.. shall we say… loose with your budget, it could affect your future funding.
Keep in mind, in the ‘good ole days’ of the NDIS everything appeared to be much more chill.
2018 NDIS was giving ‘freedom’.
It was giving ‘yassss Queen, innovation, creativity, dignity of risk, slay!’
NDIS plans felt like ‘you know you best, so you do you boo’. It felt like a ‘choose your own adventure’ with freedom, choice, and a sprinkle of reckless optimism.
Fast forward to 2025, where the vibe is more Compliance than Coachella. Now, the NDIS wants receipts, regulation, value for money, consistency, and for you to spend like your future funding depends on it (spoiler: it does).
So if you haven’t cracked open your plan recently to refresh yourself on what’s actually written in there, now is the time. It has never been more important to understand how your plan is written, what those Stated Supports actually mean, and how to advocate for the flexibility your family needs.
This article will break it alllll down in plain English, with examples, screenshots, and a little bit of side eye — because adulting in the NDIS world is hard and we always choose to laugh instead of cry. Where possible.
Nobody wants to be ‘invited’ to a debt recovery chat with the NDIA. And also because ‘Sorry I Didn’t Read the Fine Print’ is probably not going to cut it for long.
So friends, gather ‘round. We need to have a little D&M about the latest plot twist; Section 44 of the NDIS Act.
You might have already noticed that NDIS planners seem weirdly interested at your plan reassessment in how you’ve spent the funding in your last plan, and that’s no accident. Section 44 is now being flexed so let’s unpack this together — minus the legal jargon and cortisol overload.
If you’re a participant or nominee / Child Representative you need to know how this change affects your plan funding review — and why it’s now more important than ever to spend in line with your plan.
📌 What is Section 44 and Why Should You Care?
As of October 2024, planners are now required to formally review your past spending when reassessing your plan so that they can make a determination about how your next plan should be managed. That means what you spent, how you spent it, and whether you stuck to the categories and rules will now be scrutinised during reassessment.
If you underspent / overspent certain categories or spent wildly out of sync with your plan’s intended use, the NDIA may decide to cut those areas back next time, limit the amount of funding you can access at a time, raise a debt against you or change the management of your funding.
The NDIS website ‘Summary of Legislation Changes’ describes this as follows:
The NDIA kindly released a ‘Plain English Summary’ of Section 44 for those of us who like the details, but I’ve also dropped a screenshot below
And I want to emphasis this most crucial line in page 1 stating that ‘removal of self management should be a last resort’.
Does this happen in practice? Time will tell.
What about Debt Raising?
Yes the Agency have the power to raise a debt against a participant who doesn’t spend line with their plan.
However, CEO Rebecca Falkingham has said she’ll personally oversee every debt raised against a participant — which, let’s be honest, is a massive workflow ask for someone already juggling a national reform agenda. This suggests to me that raising debts will be a last resort, not a go-to move.
From a PR perspective, chasing disabled people for repayment doesn’t exactly scream “transparency and trust.” That’s why I see it being far more likely the NDIA will quietly restrict or remove self-management arrangements instead — less paperwork, fewer headlines, and easier to frame as “risk mitigation” rather than financial punishment.
📌 Stated Supports: What Are They and Why Are They Different Now?
If you don’t know what a Stated Support is, no shame — the NDIS has a whole glossary of made-up terms that no one asked for, ever.
A Stated Support is a specific support listed in your NDIS plan that must be used exactly as written. No reallocating funds, no improvising, and definitely no swapping it out for something that might work better — even if it makes sense to you. It’s locked in, no wiggle room.
Here’s where things get murky: the NDIA is in the middle of shifting from its old and clunky Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system to their very expensive and hopefully cutting edge new system called PACE. As part of this transition, the way plans and category descriptions are written is changing — and therefore so is the way the word ‘stated’ is used.
Under the old system, ‘Stated’ generally meant the funding was locked within its category. Core supports were usually flexible (you could move money between different Core categories), while Capacity Building supports were mostly stated (you couldn’t shift funds between the different Capacity Building categories).
But now, in the PACE era, things have evolved — and not always in a straightforward way.
When we first started seeing PACE plans they almost always had a very generic description in the Capacity Building - Improved Daily Living category. And we were all clapping like seals and lapping up that juicy, juicy freedom. The category description usually said something like:
But… plot twist one; the NDIS Support Lists started to impact that freedom. And;
Plot twist two; these generic descriptions are mostly gone now. And just like that, the applause stopped.
To really understand how Stated Supports work in 2025, we need to unpack a few new concepts, namely:
What does ‘spending in line with your plan’ actually mean? And;
What does the definition of ‘Stated Support’ really mean these days?
Not Just How You Spent It — But What You Spent It On
Since the October 2024 reforms, the NDIA now has an official definition of what is and isn’t an ‘NDIS Support.’ More on that here.
Spending in Line with your NDIS plan means ‘what does your unique specific individual plan description say’.
In a plan reassessment, the NDIA will not just check if your made your budget last the duration of the plan — they’ll check:
Was your funding spent on a valid NDIS Support?
Was spending linked to your approved disability / impairment?
Was it consistent with your plan’s goals and stated needs?
Was it consistent with the support description in your NDIS plan?
The NDIA now defines ‘Spending in line with your plan’ as follows:
So if you’ve been getting a little freestyle with what you claim, this is your official friendly-but-firm warning: go back and read your NDIS plan.
Why? Because if your plan includes a description of how a support category should be used, that description now overrides any choice and control you thought you had — even if the NDIS Price Guide suggests otherwise, or you’ve previously moved funding (like OT to Physiotherapy) without issue.
📌 Some Examples of How This Might Play Out:
➡️ You got $5,000 in core for Assistance with Self Care
➡️ You barely touched it, and instead you used it for STA.
➡️ Planner at next review: “Seems like you don’t need that much support for self care, we’ll cut that back.”
➡️ You claimed a beanbag and a new swing set from your ‘Core; Consumables’ budget which is not an NDIS Support under the new rules.
➡️ Planner: “Looks like you weren’t using this funding appropriately — we’ll switch this funding to Agency Managed as a ‘safeguard’.
➡️ You received $4,500 for speech pathology and $2,500 for OT.
➡️ You spent the OT funding on Physiotherapy instead.
➡️ Planner: “Guess you don’t need OT, hey?” Funding gone. And maybe Self Management gone too!
Prior spending becomes extra relevant under Section 44, because when planners review your spending, unspent funding might be viewed as a glaring neon sign that you didn’t access a need you told them was essential. So be prepared to explain why that funding wasn’t utilised if you need it in the next plan.
📌 Let’s Talk Capacity Building - Improved Daily Living (with Examples)
Improved Daily Living is generally the category where children get most of their budget, and this is the category where most allied health and therapeutic supports are funded.
If you’re one of the lucky ones and your plan comes through with the generic “Improved Daily Living Skills Assessment, training or therapy (including Early Childhood Intervention) to help build your skills, independence and community participation….” description then rock on… you’ve basically hit the jackpot in terms of choice and control. But these broad descriptions are becoming rarer so lets look at how else these categories are now being described in NDIS plans.
Example 1: the most flexible
Here due to the broad description, you essentially can use this funding for any allied health discipline. There are no hours or dollars allocated to certain therapies and so long as its meets all the other criteria; disability related, value for money etc… you can decide for yourself which allied health supports are best for you (within the context of NDIS Support Lists).
Example 2: some flexibility…
Here’s a combo plan where you’ve got $29,112 for a mix of OT and Speech. You can decide how much you use on each — but only between those two therapies - plus some continence nurse support. You can’t use this funding for Psychology or swap out some OT funding for a Physio. It’s still a Stated Support, but with a smidge more breathing room.
Note this description also states that a progress report must be submitted, so ensure you save enough funding for that to happen.
Example 3: the least flexible…
This is what we are seeing more and more of lately.
Notice how funding amounts are directly tied to specific therapies?
$4,655.76 for Speech, and the same for OT. If your plan’s written like this, you can’t move funds between those services at all. You can’t access other disciplines like Physiotherapy or Psychology.
It’s all locked down as a stated support - as the NDIA said… “you must buy NDIS supports in the way we have described in your plan.”
Bonus drama:
If your plan mentions end-of-plan reports and you didn’t budget for them, you could technically be pinged for misspending too.
Unless you get a plan continuation.
Although some participants have been told to get end of plan reports when they also are having a plan continuation. Because you know, consistency is optional.
📌 Hot Tip for Planning Meetings
During a planning meeting, when building the plan, your planner might list specific dollar amounts or hours for each therapy. What many planners don’t realise is — by doing this, they might unintentionally restrict the choice and control within that category.
Why does this matter?
It locks you into using funds exactly as listed
It removes flexibility that might have been available if the planner worded the category description differently.
Your planner may be completely unaware that they are inadvertently locking down your funding to the degree that they are.
Pro Tip:
At your next planning meeting, ask:
Is this a Stated Support or a Flexible Support?
Can the description be adjusted to avoid locking you into exact dollar amounts?
Can we describe the total budget without attaching hours or specific therapies?
Is there a workaround for plans that are not flexible enough?
If you’ve found yourself with a plan that is very locked down in the way that you can use it, there is the potential to have this resolved by getting the NDIA to either:
Change the description of that support category (usually by way of requesting a Plan Variation (S48). Keep in mind this opens up a small risk of having the full plan ‘assessed’ by the Agency.
Get in touch with the planner / a planner / your ‘My NDIS Contact’ and get something in writing that states you can use that category more flexibly, or for other therapies than what is specified in your current NDIS plan.
Go back to your LAC and ask for the ‘plan breakdown’ which is essentially the working notes of how the planner made the decision of what was Reasonable and Necessary to be funded in the plan. Essentially these are working notes on how the planner intended the funding to be used. You may also find this information in a Participant Information Access request.
Keep in mind that every time you ask the NDIA for information - you may get an answer that you don’t want - yet then if it has been provided to you in writing, you do need to abide by it.
Of course every time you have a touchpoint with the Agency there is the (small) potential for the entire plan to be opened up and picked apart, so if that would be extremely detrimental for you, this is where you need to make a risk vs benefit decision.
📌 Final Words about the Nitty Gritty Details
There’s a bit of confusion floating around about whether all the rules above apply to “New Framework” plans or “Old Framework” plans.
To clarify: all current plans are still considered Old Framework plans. The term New Framework refers to plans developed under the (yet-to-be-released) Needs Assessment Framework — and that doesn’t exist yet.
This grey area is causing tension and debate, and honestly, no one has a crystal-clear answer at the moment. But what we can talk about is risk — because, as always, my aim is to help you make informed choices.
And here’s the key: what matters most is how the NDIA is currently enforcing this issue.
Right now, we’re seeing participants being switched to Agency Management — and that shift can have major repercussions. If this outcome would be devastating for your NDIS supports, then you need to make a call based on how risk adverse you are right now.
Because right or wrong, here’s what’s at stake if you spend outside the rules:
The NDIA can change how your plan is managed (e.g. from Self-Managed to Plan- or Agency-Managed)
You might have shorter funding periods imposed upon you (i.e. you can only access three months worth of funding at a time)
The NDIA can raise a debt for any spending they decide was “misspent”
Self Managers - now is the time to think about who has liability for expenditure decisions.
Are you safer moving to Plan Management?
What are the actual benefits to being a self manager these days? Especially when we take into account all the free admin work involved and the restrictions applied to us with NDIS Support Lists.
Do the benefits of Self Management continue to outweigh the risks in your particular circumstances?
📌 Final Word
The rules are shifting, the language is slippery, and the stakes can be high. I know it’s a lot — and honestly, it shouldn’t be this complicated.
But you don’t have to navigate it alone. There is a growing community of tired but determined parents, carers, advocates, and allies who are watching closely, speaking up, and sharing knowledge.
We’re in this together — figuring it out one confusing FAQ at a time and hoping the next planing meeting doesn’t go full Hunger Games.
Key takeaways:
Know what the Stated Supports are in your current plan
Clarify it at your planning meeting
Spend according to plan
Budget for those end-of-plan reports
Push for flexibility wherever you can
Or risk your plan becoming a cage instead of a support system.
Because now? Your old spending patterns are coming to every future plan meeting with you.
📌 If this helped, share it.
Substack lets you forward this to someone else navigating the NDIS world. If this post helped you make a bit more sense of the chaos, chances are it’ll help another stressed-out parent too.
Share it with your group chat, your school WhatsApp thread, or that one friend who’s currently rage-Googling “what does stated support actually mean.”
Until next time,
x Anna
Reminder:
The content on this blog is for general informational and educational purposes only. It is based on personal experience, public information, and a whole lot of late-night reading of government documents — but it is not legal advice, financial advice, or professional guidance specific to your situation.
While I do my best to make sure information is accurate and up to date, NDIS policy and legislation can change (sometimes faster than you can say "music therapy is a real "), so always double-check with official sources or seek advice from a qualified professional if you're unsure.
Basically: I’m here to help you feel more informed and empowered — not to replace your lawyer, accountant, doctor or other professional advisor.