What NDIS covers for daily living
Cleaning, gardening and transport are the questions we get most. What everyday support means, and how to check what your own plan funds.
The most common question we get asked is some version of “can my plan pay for this?” Usually about cleaning, or the lawn, or a lift to an appointment. And the honest answer, which nobody enjoys hearing, is that it depends on your plan rather than on the task.
That is not a dodge. It is the actual mechanism. The scheme funds supports that are reasonable and necessary for a particular person’s disability-related needs, which means two people can ask about the same job and get different answers. So instead of a list that would be wrong for half the people reading it, here is how to work out your own answer.
Everyday support is a different thing from therapy
Broadly, plans separate the everyday, practical support from the clinical and therapeutic work. The first group is the hours-based help: someone assisting with personal care, getting you out of the house, helping run the household. The second is occupational therapy, physiotherapy, speech pathology, psychology and the rest.
Grove works entirely in the first group. We do not deliver therapy, and if what you need is clinical we will tell you that rather than stretch to cover it.
Knowing which group your question sits in is the first step, because it tells you which part of your plan to look at.
The three questions people actually ask
Can my plan pay for cleaning? Sometimes, and the reasoning matters. Household help is more likely to be funded when your disability is the reason you cannot do it yourself, and less likely when it is simply a job you would rather not do. A person with chronic fatigue who loses a whole day to a bathroom clean is in a different position from a busy household that wants a cleaner.
Can my plan pay for the yard? Same logic, and it comes up constantly. Garden maintenance is funded for some people and not for others, based on the same reasonable and necessary test, and on whether it is the kind of upkeep that is a normal cost of living rather than a disability-related need.
Can my plan pay for transport? Often, in some form, and this is where the detail varies most between plans. If getting to appointments, work or the shops is a genuine barrier, it is worth asking about specifically rather than assuming.
Notice the pattern. In all three cases the question is not “is this a fundable service” but “is this support reasonable and necessary for you”. Which means the answer lives in your plan and your circumstances, not on a webpage.
How to check your own plan
Four things that will get you an answer faster than reading forums.
- Read the goals section first, not the budget. Supports get funded because they connect to a goal. If a goal says something about maintaining your home independently, that is the hook the rest hangs off.
- Look at what is flexible and what is not. Some parts of a plan can be used across a range of supports and some are locked to a stated purpose. That distinction changes what you can start tomorrow.
- Ask your plan manager or support coordinator directly. They see this daily and they have no reason to guess. If you are self-managed, ask the provider to be specific about what they would be claiming against.
- Get it in writing before it starts. A service agreement that says exactly what is being delivered and what it is claimed against is the thing that prevents an unpleasant surprise three months in.
If you are not sure which of those applies to you, that is normal, and it is a completely reasonable thing to ring a provider about.
A word about anything you read online, including this
Scheme rules change, and guidance published two years ago can be wrong today. Anything you read about NDIS funding, on our site or anyone else’s, should be treated as a starting point for a question rather than an answer. The authoritative sources are your own plan, the NDIS itself, and whoever manages your funding.
What we can do is tell you what we can see. Send your plan through, or read the relevant part out over the phone, and we will tell you honestly what we think it covers and what it does not. If something you want is not funded, we would rather say so at the start than bill it against a category that was never meant for it.
Where to go next
If your question is about the everyday help itself, the two pages people usually want are gardening and home help for anything outside the house and cleaning and domestic assistance for anything inside it.
If your question is about how the funding side works more broadly, that is on how it works. And if you would rather ask a person, that is what we are here for.