What is pre-planning?

Being properly prepared for your Plan meeting is key to receiving the funding you need in your NDIS Plan. This is called pre-planning and is an important step to complete before you meet with your NDIS Planner or Local Area Coordinator (LAC) for either your first Plan or Plan review.

Pre-planning is the preparation you do to get your relevant and important pieces of information ready for your NDIS Plan meeting. As part of this, you’ll need to think about how your condition impacts you and the goals that you want to achieve to live your best life.

Pre-planning involves making sure you have all your documentation prepared and organised to support your answers to the following questions:

What does your daily life look like now?

To begin your pre-planning process, it helps to understand your daily activities and interests. Write down what every day, week and month typically involves.

Are you happy with this, or do you have aspects that you would like to change if you had support available for it?

Ask yourself questions like:

• What do I enjoy about my life right now?
• What do I typically do every day, week and month?
• What is my living situation?
• What activities do I enjoy and how often do I do them?
• Do I have a job or is employment something I am working towards?
• Is there anything that I would like to change in my life, for example, is there anything new that I would like to try?

If you would like some more ideas and information as a starting point, visit the My Profile section of the Leap in! App. The app has been designed as an easy way to capture all the information you’ll need for you planning meeting.

A really useful section in My Profile is Impact of my disability. Here you’ll find the sections for the five key areas of your life that you’ll want to think about (and some ideas on where to start): Daily Living/Self Care, Communication, Connecting with Others, Learning and Independence.

What are your current needs and supports?

Another part of your pre-planning process is to properly understand the supports you need in your day-to-day life.

Ask yourself questions like:

• What supports do I currently rely on?
• What do these supports cover and how do these impact my daily life?
• How do I feel about these supports: are they working for me or is there something I would like to change?
• What community or other government supports do I use to help me do the things I do every day?
• What other unpaid supports do I have? This might be family members, friends, community groups and activities or free government services.

What and who is important in your life?

The people and things you surround yourself with can have a huge impact on how enjoyable life is for you. Doing things that are important to you and having a positive, supportive team to help you achieve your goals can make a world of difference.

Think about these questions:

• Who are the important people in my life?
• Who makes up my support network and how are they involved in my day-to-day life?
• What things are important to me?

What involvement do you have with your community?

Getting involved within your community can have many benefits, both mentally and physically.

Ask yourself these questions:

• Am I involved in any sporting clubs, community groups or other organisations?
• Are there any activities I’d like to start or groups I’d like to join if I had the chance?
• How often do I participate, or want to participate in these activities?

Set your goals.

You’ve covered all the big questions – now it’s time to set some goals!

Set your short, medium and long-term goals. These can be anything from learning something new, to improving relationships or becoming more independent. Think about what will help you to improve your health, wellbeing and quality of life, then use these as a guide to set your goals.

Here at Leap in! we often hear from our community that people don’t know where to start when they are goal setting (things like ‘I’ve never been asked before’ and ‘I don’t know what is available’ or ‘what is a reasonable goal’). That’s why we developed a very handy resource inside the Leap in! app that has hundreds of different goal ideas.

Find examples and ideas for your goals in the Leap in! app.

1. Go to the My Goals section of the app and select Add a new goal.
2. On the Goal Detail page, you can enter your goal or select from a range of options that will appear.
3. You can refine the options shown by making sure you have included your Life Stage and Disability in the About Me section (under My Profile).

We can help.

Still not sure that you have everything covered?

Leap in! has a handy Plan meeting checklist to help make sure you have all the necessary information and documentation ready or you can call us on 1300 05 78 78 to book a free pre-planning phone consultation.