NDIS roles and responsibilities
The NDIS is Australia’s way of providing support to people with disability and supporters.
It allows eligible Australians with disability to choose providers from which to purchase the supports that enable them to pursue their goals.
The NDIA recognises the importance of a diverse, sustainable and well-developed NDIS market, which promotes innovation, quality, continuous improvement and best practice to enable people with disability to exercise choice and control in obtaining disability supports.
NDIS Market Roles and Responsibilities outlines the vision for Australians with disability to be able to access support from innovative providers and skilled workers.
This will support people with disability to pursue their goals around independence, community involvement, education, employment, and health and wellbeing.
For the NDIS market to be successful, Disability Reform Ministers, Department of Social Services, the NDIA, the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission, state and territory governments need to work together to deliver our shared vision.
Market approach
In December 2019, the former Disability Reform Council, agreed to use more flexible approaches to address NDIS market gaps. In October 2022, the now Disability Reform Ministerial Council reaffirmed this commitment.
The flexible approach recognises that a one-size-fits-all approach to NDIS access and service delivery in thin markets is not suitable to address market gaps faced by First Nations and culturally diverse communities in regional and remote Australia and across particular support types.
The NDIA Corporate Plan 2023-2027 confirms the NDIA’s commitment to support participants to be more independent and engage socially and economically, while delivering a financially sustainable NDIS that builds genuinely connected and engaged communities and stakeholders.
The NDIA works with a variety of market stakeholders to build a stable and sustainable NDIS marketplace that facilitates development of innovative supports. This is to ensure participants have access to quality supports and services regardless of where they live and what their needs are.
The NDIA has trialled a range of approaches and continues to implement market coordination activities to address market gaps across Australia. Ways in which the NDIA help participants to get services they need include:
- improving plan implementation
- improving information signals
- market facilitation
- coordinated funding proposals
- direct commissioning.
Market Facilitation
Market facilitation involves specific actions to improve connections between providers and participants, such as focused engagement and sharing targeted information with the market.
Coordinated Funding Proposals
A Coordinated Funding Proposal (CFP) is a process used to help a group of participants combine their funding to buy supports from NDIS providers. CFP’s can be run by participant/community groups without the assistance of the NDIA.
CFPs can help:
- NDIS participants to combine their funding to increase their buying power
- attract providers to communities where there are no available NDIS supports
- support participants who have difficulty finding services
- organise activities for a group of participants.
Find out more about Coordinated Funding Proposals.
Direct Commissioning
Direct commissioning is a way for the NDIA to arrange for services to be available for participants.
- Direct commissioning is used where other levers are not sufficient to achieve sustainable improvements in markets.
- Direct commissioning involves a formal contract between the NDIA and a provider or panel of providers, for longer term service delivery to a group of participants.
- This lever requires the NDIA to specify, procure and manage the service arrangements with providers over the life of the contract.
Market monitoring
The NDIA monitors the market by analysing available data and talking with stakeholders to better understand the issues, where they are, their likely causes and their impact on participants. The NDIA then uses this information to decide which market levers to use and where to target market coordination efforts. The NDIA continues to refine and improve upon its approach to monitoring the NDIS marketplace as our knowledge and evidence base grows.
Quarterly reports and Data and Insights
The quarterly reports provide information and data about participants and the funding or provision of supports by the NDIA in each area.
Data and insights provides public data releases to ensure participants and their families and carers, researchers, advocates, policy makers and the general public can find out about Scheme operations.
Historic market monitoring
The NDIA previously produced market dashboard reports which compared a number of market indicators including plan utilisation, market concentration, participants per provider and provider growth and shrinkage across geographical regions and participant characteristics. The historic reports are located on the Market monitoring webpage and were produced to assist stakeholders to understand market trends.