An update on needs assessments

When needs assessments roll out (theoretically later this year), they will completely re-shape the NDIS planning process. Yet you’d be forgiven for knowing very little about them. Searching for the information is a bit like dating after your 20s -what’s out there is scarce and scattered.

Consider this article like speed dating needs assessments. In just 8 minutes, I’ll aim to get you up-to-date with what’s happening with needs assessments, including a look inside the details of the NDIA’s tender for needs assessment tools. At the end, I can’t give you a swipe left or right option - needs assessments have been written into the NDIS Act and are basically a done deal. But we will be able to save you from reading the long and boring tenders yourself. And isn’t that the real happily ever after?

What is a needs assessment?

Needs assessments are designed to evaluate the level and type of disability supports a person needs.

Needs assessments differ from functional assessments, which evaluate a person’s ability to safely perform tasks.

For example, a functional assessment might say that Max can’t safely use kitchen appliances because of his disability. Whereas a needs assessment could say Max needs support with meal preparation.

The NDIS Review recommended the NDIA use functional assessments to determine whether a person’s disability is significant enough to be eligible for the NDIS and needs assessments to develop their Plan.

How will needs assessments change the planning process?

Plans have traditionally been developed based on information and evidence sourced by the participant or their support network. Prior to a planning meeting, the participant might get reports with recommendations from their providers and treating health professionals and/or undergo a functional assessment.

The new NDIS Act, which came into effect in October, 2024, introduced the concept of ‘new framework plans’. These are plans developed based on the results of a needs assessment.

Currently, all participants have old framework plans. But when new framework plans roll out, the planning will involve three steps:

The participant undergoes a needs assessment organised by the NDIA.
The outcome of the needs assessment is used to develop an assessment report.
Information in the assessment report determines the person’s NDIS Plan, including their flexible budget and stated supports. We don’t know yet how a needs assessment report will be translated into a Plan budget. But this process will be detailed in a legislative instrument.

The tale of the tender

On February 5th, the NDIA released one tender and two requests for information related to needs assessments. These documents offer more insight into the NDIA’s plans for needs assessments. So let’s look at them in more detail.

Tender: Needs assessment tools for people aged 16+

The NDIA’s tender requests a provider who can provide three services, including:

Support needs assessment tool(s)
Operational support to implement these tools- including workforce training and accreditation
An IT systems integration solution

The tender says the needs assessment tools must be strength-based and trauma-informed, as well as collecting enough information for the NDIA to make funding decisions. Assessment tool(s) also need to:

Primarily assess support needs rather than functional capacity, impairment or quality of life. The tender specifies that more than 50% of the content needs to relate to support needs.
Assess whether at least two types of NDIS supports would be relevant for the participant.
Assess support needs in more than one functional domain (ie. Self-care, mobility, etc.)
Have been tested for people with disability over the age of 16 .
Be available in English.
Allow people to self-report support needs.
Consider written and verbal information.

The NDIA is only looking for one tenderer at this stage, but may hold additional tender rounds in the future.

The tender closed on 28th March. Initially, the NDIA was going to pick a successful applicant in April, with the aim of starting the project in May. But as the government is now in caretaker mode until after the election on May 3rd, that whole timeline is going to need to be pushed back.

The length of the tender is 5 years, which corresponds to the rollout period for new framework plans.

Assessments for kids- request for information

The NDIA also released a request for information about assessment tools that can be used with children. A request for information is an industry consultation process; there’s no actual money attached, but unlike regular consultations, you have to sift through pages of legal jargon and create an AusTender account.

The NDIA requested information about off-the-shelf (i.e. already developed) assessment tools for assessing children's support needs.

They were looking for information about tools which:

Assess the level of support a child needs, either by measuring their support needs or their functional capacity and development.
Assess a child’s functional capacity or development.
Assess the areas of life where a child has support needs or reduced functional capacity, including self-care, communication, language development, mobility/motor development, and social and emotional development.
Can be delivered in a strength-based, culturally safe and trauma-informed manner.
Look at how a child’s support needs across multiple environments and explore how these might change over time.

Notably, in the children cohort, the NDIA seems more open to assessments that test functional capacity.

Assessments for specific supports- request for information

The other request for information from the NDIS sought information from the sector on off-the-shelf (i.e. already developed) assessment tools that can assess a person’s need for specific supports. These supports are:

Assistive technology
Vehicle modifications
Home modifications
Disability-related health supports
High-level support worker care- the example of what constitutes high-level supports is ‘where support is expected to be greater than 48 support hours per day.’ If you are wondering how there can possibly be more than 24 hours in a day, it’s 24 hours of support at a 2:1 support worker-to-participant ratio.

How will the results of a needs assessment translate into an NDIS plan?

Needs assessment tools don’t spit out a dollar amount, so there will need to be some serious behind-the-scenes machinations to turn the results into a reasonable and necessary budget. We don’t yet know what this process will look like, and it’s something I think about more than could be reasonably considered healthy.

Designing this process wasn’t a part of the tender application. We’ve been promised that the process will be transparent and detailed in new legislative NDIS Rules.

Who will deliver needs assessments?

The NDIA will develop a 1,000 person workforce to deliver needs assessments. It’s not clear at this stage whether the workforce will be NDIA staff or contractors.

The tender documents say this workforce will include ‘people with an allied health background, as well as people with lived experience of disability or with extensive disability experience.’

Will needs assessments take into account multiple disabilities?

The tender says that needs assessments will assess someone’s ‘whole-of-person disability support needs.’

However, under the new NDIS Act people can only receive supports for impairments that meet that access criteria. The Act also says that needs assessments should look at supports related to the person’s eligible impairments. Learn more about impairment notices here: NDIS Act Explained: Impairment Notices.

Most likely, they forgot an asterisk in the tender that says something like ‘*whole-of-person minus everything about the person which isn’t eligible for NDIS.’

When will needs assessments start rolling out?

The federal election will push back the timeline for needs assessment. Right now, the federal government is in caretaker mode, which means that agencies like the NDIA can’t award major new tenders. So, they won’t be able to pick a tenderer for support needs assessments tools in April, as initially planned. There’s also the possibility that a new government would have different plans.

On the NDIA’s website, the timeline is:

February - April 2025- explore the best way to collect information from participants and how that information can be used.
April - September 2025- test the new approach to gathering information and setting budgets.
September 2025 onwards- start using needs assessments to set participant budgets, with checks and balances in the early stages.

But since they won’t finalise needs assessment tools until May at the earliest, my gut says that timeline is a tad unrealistic.

The Act says that everyone should have transitioned to new framework plans within 5 years.

Learn more

As we said up top, information on needs assessments is scattered. But here are some places you can go to learn more:

Unfortunately, the tender and request for information documents have been taken off the AusTender website now that the procurement period has closed. But they truly are very boring, so you’re not missing out on much.

We’ll keep you updated as we learn more.