What are our rights in a Plan Reassessment Meeting?
Don't lose your cool, or your funding...
Step into an NDIS FB group these days and they’re filled with horror stories about phone calls out of the blue, insisting on ‘having a chat’ or ‘just a check in’ and suddenly a new plan drops into the portal with the budget slashed or Self Management rights removed.
As we know, the NDIS is in its ‘fiscal sustainability’ era and dropping bombs left, right and centre about what is funded, what isn’t funded, retracting information and then changing FAQ’s faster than you can say ‘repeatedly calling the NCC until they give me the answer I want’.
So… what to do….?
We go to the facts thats what we do.
I’ve put together a little (who am I kidding) a not so little breakdown of all the relevant legislation, rules, operational guidelines and underpinning principals of the NDIS so that you feel somewhat more informed about how the process should flow, what your rights are, and how to have them upheld.
Keeping in mind I am #notalawyer and this is not legal or professional advice….
Lets start at the very beginning…
The NDIS state that the planning process abides by the following principals:
Fair for everyone, both today and for future generations
Fair funding to pursue your goals
Evidence-based best practice
Fair early investments
Fair support across service systems
Fair supports for your disability needs
Fair assistance from multiple programs
These sound very utopian and ideological and I don’t blame you if you feel like many of us are getting the Temu version of ‘fair’ right now.
So let’s go even deeper into the foundations of the NDIS and the guiding principals of The NDIS Act 2013 - original piece of legislation in Section 4 which includes:
(4) People with disability should be supported to exercise choice, including in relation to taking reasonable risks, in the pursuit of their goals and the planning and delivery of their supports…