What to Look For in an NDIS Support Coordinator: Green Flags and Red Flags

Choosing a support coordinator is one of the most important decisions, and one of the least guided, you will make as an NDIS participant. According to your plan, you have funding for coordination; no one gives you a book on how to choose the one who will use it.

This is more significant than one thinks. The advantages of a good coordinator are multiplied: it links you to the right providers, helps you solve problems before they get bigger, and helps build your confidence. If it’s poor, it costs $100.14 an hour (at the 2025-26 Level 2 rate) and does nothing more than you could have done yourself.

If choosing a Support Coordinator feels overwhelming, you're not alone. Many participants aren't shown what makes one coordinator different from another or what questions to ask before making a decision.

At Support Network, we regularly help participants understand what to look for so they can choose someone who supports their goals, builds their confidence and helps them get the most from their NDIS plan.

Here’s how to distinguish good coordination from bad, by their attributes.

The Green Flags

They discuss your objectives first, before their services. A good coordinator’s first questions are about you: your hopes, your strengths and your challenges. If the first meeting is focused on them telling you about their organisation, then they are doing it wrong.

They understand the local providers, they really do. Ask them directly, “If I asked for an OT in my area next month, who would I call first, and why?” A coordinator who understands their patch will be able to respond with specificity, naming providers and trade-offs. If they say ‘we’d search for you’, it means they will be doing their local market research while you fund it.

They’re honest about what they have to offer, and how. Coordination funding is limited. A good coordinator will give you a fairly accurate estimate of the amount of time you have, offer you suggestions on how to use that time, and follow up with you as the budget runs out. Coordinators who never speak about hours are the ones who are burning them.

They will try to make themselves unneeded. It may sound counterintuitive, but that’s what it’s supposed to do. Capacity Building funds support for the purpose of building your capacity: skills, knowledge and connections, so that over time you will need less support. If a coordinator is speaking about becoming independent, they are doing their job as intended. A person who makes you dependent upon them is not serving you, but themselves.

They respond. Within 1 or 2 business days, reliably. A coordinator that can’t be reached when things go wrong, a worker has left, a service has fallen through, is not much use.

They’re not tied to other providers, or they disclose the connection. If your coordinator is employed by the same organisation as your support workers or therapist, there is a large conflict of interest, because they’re looking to get your business as your coordinator. That’s not a deal-breaker, some groups do it successfully, but it’s important for them to acknowledge the conflict openly, and show that they will use external providers if they’re a better choice for you.

The Red Flags

It's okay to ask questions before choosing a Support Coordinator. You're trusting someone to help you make the most of your plan, so you deserve to feel confident they're the right fit.

They focus all their activities on their organisation’s services. The best indicator in the business. If all of your recommendations are services that their employer offers, your coordinator isn’t a facilitator, they’re a salesperson.

They aren’t able to tell you what your plan will look like. Test it in advance: have them explain your plan in simple terms. If they cannot make your own funds comprehensible, they cannot do the most primary function of the work.

They are always late or out of the office. Emails answered in days, never-ending meetings, and never getting a call back. Support coordination has been static for six years running, unchanged since 2019-20, and it has really put a strain on the sector and forced some coordinators to work with too many cases. That’s context for the problem; it isn’t a requirement for you to accept it.

Everything is a phone call charged to your plan. Be alert to coordinators with extensive hours but little to show for it. It’s your right to inquire about the time used. If a coordinator can’t justify their hours in a tangible way, then it’s time to find a new coordinator.

They do things for you that you were wanting to learn to do for yourself. Helpfulness that does not impart a skill is a help to dependence. If, after 12 months with a coordinator, you don’t know your plan better than you did on day one, then the capacity-building function has not worked.

For Specialist Support Coordination: they are not registered. Unlike standard coordinators, who are not currently required to be registered, the $190.54/hr specialist tier (Level 3 coordinators) have always been required to be registered, and must also fulfil additional practice standards. If a specialist is being funded, check the provider’s registration. This is not optional, it’s mandatory.

Questions to Ask Before Making a Decision

Be brief but to the point. How many participants does each coordinator carry? (Slow responses are likely with huge caseloads.) Who covers for your coordinator during their leave? Do they have an example of a problem they recently helped a participant solve? How will they report on the hours they’ve used? And the conflict question, put straight: does your organisation provide other NDIS services, and how do you manage recommending your competitors?

A good coordinator will be able to comfortably answer all of the above. Discomfort with the questions is itself a piece of information.

You Can Choose, and You Can Change

If you have coordination in your plan, it’s up to you which provider you choose, you’re not required to use a particular one, and you don’t get locked into it. If the coordinator you select is a poor fit, you can change, typically with the notice set out under your service agreement. For years, too many people accept second-rate coordination in good faith, or in the absence of better alternatives, and, without saying a word, lose money on coordination that isn’t really helping them.

The bar you’re holding them to is this: at the end of every month, you should have something tangible to point to that your coordinator advanced. If you cannot do that, time after time, it is not your expectations that are the issue.

Seeking support workers after you’ve mapped your plan with your coordinator? Support Network matches NDIS participants with vetted workers all over Australia. Learn more at supportnetwork.com.au or call 1300 671 931.