Changing your plan

The NDIS is designed to give you the supports you need to build your skills, maximise your independence, and help you pursue your goals. If your situation and needs change, your plan may also need to change. 

You should tell us about any changes in your life so we can make sure you are getting the right support. 

We will work directly with you each time your plan needs to be changed.

You don’t have to wait for your check-in to tell us about changes to your life. You can ask us to change your plan at any time. 

You can do this by talking to your my NDIS contact, support coordinator or recovery coach about what has changed. They will explain what kind of new information we need to help decide if we can make changes to your plan. 

The information we need will depend on the reason you’re asking for changes.

We’ll look at the information and evidence you give us, the changes you’re asking for, and how the changes work with the rest of your NDIS plan. 

We'll talk to you about how you might be able to use the flexibility in your current plan to meet your needs.

When we consider changes to your plan, we need to make sure that your plan works together as a reasonable and necessary package of supports. The changes you ask for also need to be the kinds of supports we can fund.

A plan variation is a small change to your current plan. When we do a plan variation, we only make changes to part of your plan. 

Small changes we can make include: 

• your goals 
• the information about you, including your contact details
• your plan reassessment date 
• the way you manage your funding. 
• providing funding for short-term supports when your situation changes suddenly 
• crisis or emergency funding because of a significant change in your support needs.

We can make this change while we prepare for your plan reassessment.

In a plan reassessment, we replace your plan with a new one. 

We'll do a plan reassessment when:

• your life changes and your plan no longer meets your need
• the plan reassessment date in your plan is coming up and your support needs change.

If you have a plan reassessment for changes to your plan, your my NDIS contact, support coordinator or recovery coach will help you prepare.

Your my NDIS contact can help with explaining:

• the kinds of information and evidence you’ll need for your plan reassessment
• how to go about gathering this information and evidence
• the plan reassessment process.

An NDIA planner will review the information and evidence you provide for your plan reassessment. The NDIA planner will consider what supports are reasonable and necessary for you for everyday life, to pursue your goals, increase your independence, and to help you work, study and join social activities. 

Learn more about how we develop your NDIS plan.

Read more about how and when we can change your plan in our guideline.

If we decide not to change your plan, we’ll explain our decision. We’ll talk to you about your review rights and offer a plan implementation meeting. 

A plan implementation meeting is a chance to work with your my NDIS contact and discuss how your current supports can work better together to make the most of your plan.

You can ask for an internal review of our decision. Learn more about internal and external reviews of our decisions in our guideline.

Amendments to the NDIS Act about how the NDIA should manage changes to participant plans was passed by the Australian Parliament in March 2022. This means there are now two ways we can make changes to your plan.

Learn more about the next step in the NDIS participant journey.

To learn about how we can change your plan, you can read our factsheet and use our checklist:

• changing your plan
• checklist – changing your NDIS plan.