Using your NDIS Capacity Building budget for occupational therapy

Most NDIS plans have three budgets: Core, Capacity Building and Capital. Core gets spent because it pays for the support workers who turn up every week. Capital gets spent because it buys equipment somebody has already asked for. Capacity Building is the one that quietly rolls to the end of the plan with money left in it.

That matters, because unspent funding does not carry over and it can be read at the next review as evidence you did not need it.

What Improved Daily Living actually pays for

Improved Daily Living is the sub-category within Capacity Building that funds therapy. For occupational therapy, it covers:

• Assessment — including functional capacity assessments
• Therapy sessions aimed at building a skill or changing how a task is done
• Assistive technology assessment and prescription time
• Home modification assessment and report writing
• Training for you, your family or your support workers
• Report writing and clinical documentation

The theme is the same throughout: it pays for things that reduce how much support you need later, rather than things that provide support now.

The difference that trips people up

Core funding buys someone to do a task with you or for you. Capacity Building buys the work of making the task easier, safer or possible without that person.

A support worker helping you shop each week is Core. An OT working out why shopping is difficult, changing the approach, sorting out transport and building the routine so you can do it with less help is Capacity Building.

Both are legitimate. But if all your funding goes to attendance and none goes to capacity, nothing changes between plans — and the next plan tends to look like the last one.

Why it goes unspent

Three reasons, in roughly this order.

Nobody explained it. Plans are handed over with a number against a category and no description of what that number is for.

Therapy feels less urgent. If a support worker doesn't come, the day falls apart. If a therapy session doesn't happen, nothing visibly breaks — until review time.

Finding a therapist is hard. This is real, particularly outside metropolitan areas. Waitlists, providers who don't travel, and providers who take a referral and then go quiet.

What to do with six months left

If you are partway through a plan with Improved Daily Living funding sitting unused, this is the practical order:

1. Check the balance. Your plan manager can tell you exactly what is left. Self-managed participants can see it in the my NDIS participant portal.
2. Work out what would make the biggest difference. Not what sounds most therapeutic — what is actually hardest right now.
3. Book the assessment first. Assessment tells you whether the problem is the person, the task or the environment, and the answer changes what you should spend the rest on.
4. Leave room for the report. If a plan review is coming, reserve some of the budget for progress reporting. A review with no evidence is a review that goes badly.

A note on reviews

Unspent Capacity Building funding is not automatically removed at review, but it is noticed. The stronger position is a plan where the funding was used and there is a report explaining what changed as a result. That is an argument for continuing the funding. An untouched budget is an argument against it.

If you are on the Peninsula and not sure what your Improved Daily Living funding could usefully be spent on, call and ask. It costs nothing to find out, and the answer is sometimes that a single assessment would do more than a block of sessions.