It can be frustrating putting time and energy into putting together an NDIS Assistive Technology report, only to have it declined or for it to sit in 'review phase' for extended periods of time. This week, I'm going to show you the exact method I use to get my clients the funding they need to meet their goals. |
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Hey, it's Gail here. Today, I want to share with you some of the information I've put in my funding reports for NDIS Assistive Technology that helped my clients be able to get the funding they need to get the equipment they need so they can meet their goals. The NDIS have a form that's available on their website that includes the information that they need to go and help them make decisions. Now, first of all, make sure that you're always using the latest version of the form because they have updated it quite a few times. It's really important that you make sure you have the right form that has all the information they need. Otherwise, your report might get rejected just because you used the wrong form and didn't provide all the information required. You don't want that.
I've actually downloaded that and don't use the site form off your own computer. The idea is, is all about matching reasonable and necessary to a person's goals, their disability and their functional needs and the outcomes and how it might overkill and overcome some of the limitations that disability has left them with. First of all, I look at what the person's goals are. Now, this varies widely from client to client. Some of our clients have some really specific goals about ... Now, I'm a speech therapist, so I'm going to talk mostly communication needs. This information applies for whatever piece of equipment you are looking for. They might have goals around communication or participation or being able to join in the classroom or whatever it is. I take those goals and work out how that relates to what I'm trying to achieve. Now, if for communication, I'm looking at participation. I'm looking at maybe you have some social goals, making friends, and the same can be done for other sorts of equipment.
Sometimes, they have some really broad goals like, "I want to live a good life," and I've had a few clients that their goals have boiled down to essentially, "I just want to live a good life." I've had to interpret a little bit of what a good life might entitle like making friends, participating in my community, getting my needs met, all the things that make up a good life. In that case, I often include the specific speech therapy goals that we have, which might be more specific than the planned goal or the life goal that the person has, which is completely natural that your life goal might be to get to go to a university, but you have some specific therapeutic goals that might be the step along the way to achieve that, that clearly, I've written down unless you are in a therapeutic process.
Then, I've usually done at least two trials. Then, for communication and alternative communication, I've often done what amounts to a multitude of trials because I might try two or three pieces of hardware and two or three pieces of software, which can be used on different devices that each have different features that make it better or less useful for the person. Sometimes, I have done effectively 10 or 15 different trials with a few pieces of equipment combinations. I better get down to the most important ones and lay out, and the ones that I know the NDIS will go for like here's an iPad. I want to meet this person's needs over a more expensive specialized communication system because that comes down to the cost up then, and it's a question the NDIS are asking, so I usually compare an iPad and trial an iPad, which might be across a couple of sessions rather than a take-home trial and see which one works best for each individual client.
You need to be really clear about what makes it better, and think about some of the common arguments people might have like cost, ease of use. You need to think about the training and also they're really there to participate in the environments they are. For a child, that would include their education environments. Does this allow them to participate in the curriculum needs, not changing the curriculum at all because the NDIS doesn't fund that, but does this help them to be a better participant in the environments that they spend time with? Yes, so I look at those things, and I also look at their future needs. Many communication devices allow the person to be able to access environmental control if it's a dedicated device, and so I look at what's the likelihood of that person needing to be able to access that in the next couple of years.
If some of my children are mobile, and we really don't need to have a great deal of environmental control because they can get up and change the channel on the TV or just turn the light on and off, whatever my client's physical needs, so that's another consideration that I have. Then, I think about what the person wants as well. Naturally, the client's perspective is really important, so I talk about how, their family trial and what things they have learned from doing that trial, and whether they'd agree with me that the piece of equipment I recommend is indeed right for them.
Once I've completed all that, which, it really takes me a while to think about all the arguments that the NDIS might have for and against that particular piece of equipment for that particular person, I then send it off. Then, their process tends to take a while, to say at this stage, quite a bit longer than what I would consider for many of my clients to be reasonable, because they're children. They're growing, and under-met communication, so delays in access to communication can have significant delays on their future. Then, I also talk about that in my reports that why this is urgently required for the development and for the future impact on their lives.
There's a few tips that I have for filling out those NDIS forms. I have another tip, actually, just that I want to share with you, is sometimes, I have a lot to write because I'm talking about complex equipment. I find the NDIS form a little bit challenging to use, so I have to write it in a separate document, and in the NDIS boxes, refer to my other document and match the headings and the numbering system so that it's easy for the planner to refer across, so that I can get my message across without losing information in the formatting of their form.
I would like to hear from you guys. What's working for you in getting funding for your clients, so that they can get the equipment they need to meet their goals? Have you got any tips for the things that you prescribe? Any questions that you know the NDIS always shoot back to you or to the client as they tend to do, as they don't communicate with clinicians because of consent issues that's written in the legislation? Share what's working. If you have any particular challenges getting any sort of equipment that your clients need but isn't being funded, please share with me. We can problem-solve together, inform the community, and we can learn from each other. Looking forward to joining you in the conversation. We'll talk to you soon.
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