Frequently Asked Questions

Sometimes the NDIS provides an option for someone to help you connect with services and supports to help you achieve your goals. This is (confusingly) called Coordination of Supports ... or Support Coordination and comes under the capacity building part of a person's NDIS plan.

A support coordinator is the person who provides this function.

The NDIS provides three levels of funding with (Level 2) the most common provided.  SchemeWise is also registered as a specialist support coordinator (Level 3) and has higher level expertise than many other providers.

Our people are all degree trained, health and allied health professionals over-sighted by government regulators.  This provides you a very high level of quality-assured services from experts whom know how various systems (called mainstream services) work together.

A coordinator can also monitor how your plan is going and can assist you to gather information for annual or requested plan reviews as well as help fix things with your provider services/supports if they go wrong.  We can ensure your other services provider reports where needed too.

A SchemeWise support coordinator also helps augment your capacity and is a personal disability supports adviser to help you learn how to work with the NDIS.

SchemeWise support coordinators are expert helpers and have a great track record of providing trusted, actionable advice.  To get started we like to meet people (usually at your home) and understand your goals and what help you think you need with your NDIS plan.  Its really very simple.... because we come to you.

There are a few other necessary bits around this service.  As explained on the 'Getting Started' page we may need some background documents and/or reports, to understand your conditions, crisis or other issues areas, and any complications around your disability too.  Examples of reports we may require include, previous NDIS reports, doctors, psychologist or specialist reports, OT reports, nursing or physiotherapy reports, etc.  This helps us understand what's happened in the past, what your circumstances are now, and how we can help with the various options around under your NDIS plan. All your information is kept private and confidential... but it's really hard to see in a dark room... and our coordinators must be able to understand your circumstances to offer you the best advice or understand functional problems for you.  Coordinators also may help you advance relevant recommendations from your reports, so they can help you plan to access mainstream, community or funded disability supports and gain the right advice for your NEXT plan review too.

Life transitions happen to everyone. When we leave primary school to go to high school; that's a transition.

When we leave school to get a job; that's a transition too. Others include when you leave home to live independently.  Or if you have health, or mental health issues then recovery back to your normal life is a transition also.

For some people a transition may also be moving from one provider to another... and getting help to do this (finding/putting in place a service agreement, etc) is part of the transition process which you can be supported to achieve.  For this reason, transition services, are most often short term and focused on a specific matter.

If you have a capacity building supports in your plan you can probably access a transition service - and they can also assist people self-managing also (see below).

You do NOT need to have support coordination to access these options.

Transition supports are a great way for anyone to get help in a specific area - like daily living, relationships, school, training, work, or social connections.   From budgeting to making friends and everything in between!

Life transitions are SPECIFIC to the area of your plan  also- for example -  Improved Daily Living or Increased Social and Community Participation. For this reason, they link to your goals and what you hope to achieve in that area.

People self-managing their NDIS plans can access life transitions services too - it allows them to get help for specific issues or areas they are less knowledgeable about and can really help build capacity for that specific matter.

SchemeWise Registered Nurses can provide nursing services under the NDIS category, 'Assessment and Support by a Nurse' and 'Community Nursing.'

This is provided as a therapeutic service under the NDIS and offers a broad range of activities around complex needs, care and planning.

It includes assessments, training carers workers and supports for you or so your family can care for you better.

SchemeWise nurses can also review health documentation and present it in a functional and capacity way for the NDIS.

Our nurses can also deliver a range of services from wound management, to catheter care and care plans (epilepsy management, etc).

For more information go to 'Our Services' on the top menu then locate Nursing under Value-Add services.

When you need a trusted someone to talk things through a SchemeWise counsellor can assist.

Like when you are trying to work out your goals or when unexpected things happen. Or perhaps you need to build better life skills?

SchemeWise counsellors can help with whatever your personal circumstances may be and are your trusted partner to a better more resilient you.  And they can support your carers or family members too so that they can continue to care for you in the best possible way!

SchemeWise counsellors also work with our nursing staff and can support your care and support teams when things go wrong - helping to get things back on track and working again.  For example: when there is a near miss, when people become very stressed/distressed, or if there are behavioural problems that upset people.

We also directly support providers and their staff too!  We call this a Debriefing service - please call or email about this.

SchemeWise is now operating its Occupational Therapy service in the ACT and the Southern NSW NDIS areas.  In future, we are expanding this service to Wagga and Albury.

Occupational Therapists help people to achieve their goals in different areas of their life from self-care, living independently or needing other living options, to work, play, for training and school or other education, or for participation in community and hobby activities.  An OT's role is to make assessments of a person's capabilities (called a functional assessment) and any needs they may have, or supports required, to enable their maximum participation.

Our OT's can also assist with cognitive assessments too. These type of assessments indicate how a person thinks and what supports they may require with problems like memory, executive function, coordination, life administration, orientation to time and place, etc.

Occupational Therapy is available under the Capacity Building support called Improved Daily Living (CB Daily).  If you do not have this or the funds are not available, it is also possible to secondarily use Core funds (if you have funding under Activities of Daily life).

If you need support from an OT why not talk with us today as our capacity is increasing! 

Please note that this service is under high contention and there is a 5+ month wait list on average. You should also be aware after an OT appointment that assistive technology trials may be required, and quoting for items may need to occur before a report can be issued.  On average, once assessments and quotes are completed, a report takes about 4 weeks to finalise and issue. Some reports must be provided directly to the NDIS.

If you are close to review time, you may like to consider our 'Assessment and Support by a Nurse' service instead.  This assessment service can also provide global functional and cognitive assessments and is often a great way to ensure you have relevant information so the NDIS and other services can understand a person's capacity and care needs. However, this service cannot recommend AT products.  Like the OT item, this service comes under IDL or Core funds too. The wait time for this service is around 2 weeks - with a further few weeks required for report issue.

SchemeWise Psychosocial Recovery Coaching is available in ACT and the Southern NSW NDIS areas.  This service is practically focused toward recovery, safety, and future planning. Our person-centred focus is on helping people in their community recovery process, individualised for them.  We use internationally recognised recovery planning processes and our people are experienced in mental health services recovery.  Our people are diploma or degree trained offering high level quality overseen by appropriate professional registrations.

SchemeWise Employment Counselling and Coaching is available in ACT and the Southern NSW NDIS areas.  This service is practically focused toward 1:1 and more intensive support toward training and work. Our person-centred focus is focused on helping people identify their work goals, understand employment needs, address skills gaps and build pathways to work, including volunteering.

People can expect to work closely with their coach on a weekly basis and must be prepared to put relevant effort in between their meeting times.  This is NOT a set and forget service. The service is most often more useful for people with higher level needs then they may get from working with a general DES provider or in a group setting.  People may work with a counsellor for 3-9 months initially and once at work the focus often shifts to a coaching role where we can help develop modes of work and others to understand your needs to get the job done!

NOTE: This service is only available using Improved Daily Living funds OR Finding and Keeping a Job funds.  It is only available to people whom have plan-managed of self-managed funding in their NDIS plan.

Our coaches can also work in with your other providers, or workplace, in our provision of 1:1 support.

Did you know... an employment coach can also help improve your work performance if you are already working but have difficulties?  We do this by looking at reasonable options which may help you do a job better and setting up processes you can follow easier from communication to task completion.

Disclaimer: The timing guidance indicated above is of a general and illustrative nature only.  Individual requirements and the specifics of a person's circumstances, past experience and skills determine the nature of how this service might assist them in context with available funding.  SchemeWise will work with a person to understand their needs and provide individual advice to them to inform a reasonable and practical service position.  It is an individual's right and choice alone to take up a service offer on our knowledge of their needs.  In some cases, it may take a few cycles of NDIS support to ultimately achieve employment/work of some form especially if the programmed NDIS funds are lesser provisioned or elsewhere utilised at the same time.