When a Plan Cut Affects Your Support Worker Hours: Your Options

If you have less funding for an activity, many things will suffer, especially your service provider, staff or partners' working hours. This is the same fate that NDIS participants have been saddled with following the reforms from the government.

Here is a small backstory:

The Government of Australia recently realised that there are too many people to cater for via the National Disability Insurance Agency’s NDIS (National Disability Insurance Scheme) funding, which was a bit limited. They reformed the scheme using available data, leading to many plans being reassessed.

This reassessment led to a loss of funding for some, an increase for others, and no change in status for the rest. As a result, many participants have lost the funding to pay for the time of support workers who help them.

If you are an affected participant reading this, you are not alone in this struggle. But it is not all gloom and doom, because there are ways to make your reassessed funds work for you.

This is a guide containing practical options to protect your support.

Start Here: Understand Exactly What Changed

Rarely does the government cut funding to schemes like the NDIS, so your first move should not be panic, neither should it be agitative moves against your plan managers or the agency.

Your first move should be to look at your plan holistically to figure out what supports were de-funded or given reduced funding. To do this, look at your previous plan and your current reassessed plan, and compare:

• funding allocated to Core Supports (this is where payment for support hours comes from);
• funding allocated to daily living supports;
• community participation funding.

Also, look for any notes explaining the planning decision. Doing this will help you measure precisely, the difference between your last plan and the current one, which is way more than the total dollars cut from the funding.

It is also important to note that your reduced funding is not the NDIA saying you do not need some kinds of supports. Every reassessed plan is a result of the following:

• updated market pricing arrangements of some supports
• changed assumptions in planning
• revised service agreements
• evidence gaps
• support categories being interpreted differently
• changed use patterns from previous plans.

The NDIS has a pricing framework which sets guidance and maximum pricing limits for supports that is updated regularly. It operates merely as a suggestion, but participants are not expected to pay any more than the NDIA-approved limits.

Understanding all of the above gives you a concrete basis for your next move.

Practical Options to Maintain Support Worker Costs

Option 1: Challenge the Reduction if Your Support Needs Have Not Changed

That your funding has been cut does not mean you have totally lost important dollars for your care needs. If your evidence is strong, challenge the reduction by requesting a review.

Do not forget: you must have understood exactly what changed and the possible reasons why the NDIA cut your funding before you do this.

Present irrefutable, specific evidence as to why the supports that were de-funded or whose funding were reduced are important in your routine as a person living with disability.

If this seems overwhelming, seek out a support coordinator or independent disability advocacy services. They help participants understand their review options and prepare documentation to challenge funding cuts.

Option 2: Make Your NDIS Support Hours Go Further With Self Management

Self management simply means handling your NDIS funding by yourself instead of allowing the NDIA (agency managed) or a service provider (plan managed) to handle it for you.

You could choose not to challenge the cut and do this instead. You could also do this while you wait for the decision on your review application. But you cannot jump into this without understanding how support worker costs are affected by the NDIS’ pricing rules.

We have found that many participants assume they are paying only for a Support Worker hourly rate, but in reality, the price your service provider charges to your plan usually includes more than wages. You are probably also paying for things like administration, rostering, compliance, travel, insurance, supervision, and training the support worker who helps you.

Self-management helps participants navigate all of these extra costs by giving them a choice to not pay them, and just pay NDIS Support Workers hourly rates. Self-management also increases the responsibility on the participant because they will become responsible for:

• record keeping;
• payments;
• ensuring supports are reasonable and necessary;
• managing agreements with workers.

Support coordinators can help with the above, however.

Fair Work, Employment Relationships, and Worker Pay

Another thing you must understand as a self manager of your NDIS plan is the legal framework behind support work.

While the employment relationship is key to how much you pay your support workers and how many hours they work, they must tally with the Australian workplace law and the conditions set by the Fair Work Commission as well as the Fair Work system.

The pricing rules you should know as a self-manager are as follows:

• Weekday Daytime

This is usually the cheapest and the basis of most plans and budgets.

• Active overnight

Your support worker has to be with you through the night and they must be awake and active throughout. This can be pricey because of fatigue and overnight labour conditions.

• Sleepover period

Your support worker is allowed to sleep under this arrangement, but they must be available if needed. The pricing of this is in the intermediate level.

Also, when you request support outside standard hours like weekends and public holidays or require them to stay beyond the agreed hours by no fault of yours or by design (overtime), you pay penalty rates.

You will also have to pay more for high-intensity support or remote area support.

Option 3: Renegotiate and Reprioritise Support Hours for Long-Term Stability

Now that you have decided to manage your plan by yourself, it is time to call your support workers to the negotiating table.

Start with what must be protected first, which are your core supports. If you have a problem figuring out which ones are your core supports because your managers have been handling all that, here is a way to determine them:

Tier 1: Essential supports

• personal care (washing, dressing, toileting)
• medication assistance
• mobility support
• overnight safety support

Tier 2: Stability supports

• meal preparation
• domestic assistance
• transport to appointments

Tier 3: Quality of life supports

• social outings
• recreational activities
• community participation beyond essentials

Every negotiation must be done with the goal of protecting the supports in tier 1 first, even if other areas must temporarily suffer. To help you negotiate better, redesign your support structure ahead of time. This means building personalised support systems that can help you manage the hours that your new funding can pay for.

What this entails is that you take a look at your daily routines and you design your supports around them. You will also have to combine tasks so that each visit becomes more efficient, align the supports with the times you need them the most, and be very deliberate with your scheduling.

And when you negotiate, be clear and respectful as you communicate what you would like them to do for you.

Clear and respectful communication can help you:

• adjust shift lengths;
• combine shorter visits into longer efficient sessions;
• agree on revised hourly rates where appropriate;
• move to more direct arrangements if suitable.

To help convince the support workers at the negotiating table, you can make their rosters more straightforward, such that they know when to be at your side even if they are woken up from a deep sleep. You can also try to group several shifts into one to give them some time off, and most importantly, promise to reduce or stop last-minute cancellations.

Be careful not to bypass legal frameworks, no matter how tempting it is. The employment relationship must remain compliant with Fair Work Commission standards and Fair Work protections.

The Role of Customer Care Teams and Provider Communication

Unless you are patronising a sole trader for your supports or have a trained worker under casual employment helping you out, please communicate with the service providers who handle your supports.

It is as simple as reaching out to their customer care team to adjust the roster of the staff member they assign to you, change the billing cycle or prices, adjust support coordination, discuss a new minimum support session time and possibly escalate issues.

This communication is really underrated when it comes to recovering support worker hours whether funding increases, reduces or remains the same. Anybody can take advantage of a chat with a provider's customer care team to save money on care.

Putting the Options Together

Notice how each option was explained in a way that makes them standalone and as part of a whole? This is because each option works as its own strategy to help you manage your reassessed funding, and as steps in a holistic strategy to manage your reassessed funding.

This is our advice on how to combine all three if you want to:

• Stabilise first (Option 3):

Budget cuts or budget changes in any area of life needs only one key move, and that is finding stability with whatever is left of the budget. Make sure you sort out which needs are important (tier 1) and renegotiate hourly rates and how they are supported with your service providers or care workers.

• Switch to self management (Option 2):

After stabilising, you can switch to self management so that you can own the process of disbursing the funds you have towards the supports that are in tier 1.

• Challenge the cut (Option 1):

If your needs have not changed, then challenge the cut to your NDIS plan. Make sure to gather all the evidence you can, and seek the help of support coordinators or independent disability advocacy services to help you make them foolproof.

Reviewing might help you get your funding back, or even increase it beyond your last funding. Self-management will help you cut costs and get you more support hours. You might end up with better off.

The Bottom Line

Reductions suck. Nobody ever wants to see their wages reduced because it will mean drastic changes. How much more a person living with disability in Australia?

However, it does not have to be the end of a stable support system. It is simply a moment to sit, reflect, and restructure how you receive and pay for support hours.

Some support will need to be redesigned and some will need to be prioritised differently. Some may need to be temporarily reduced while alternatives are put in place, while some may need to go totally. Wherever the case may be, clear planning, negotiation, and the proper use of the available systems will help any participant to regain a surprising level of control.