5 tips on how to develop great NDIS goals

Think about what you’d like your life to look like in a years’ time? Would you like to have moved out of your family home? Would you like to be volunteering, working in an office, or do you want to be a DJ? Do you want to take an overseas holiday?

So your goals might be:

• to build my life skills
• to build my employment skills, or
• to build my social skills.

Try to be specific about exactly what your goals are, and what support you think you might need to achieve these goals. For example:

This year, I want to learn how to use public transport by myself so I can go to visit my friends without the help of my parents.

Breaking this goal down, you can see it includes quite specific pieces of information on what a person wants to achieve:

• When – this year
• What and how – learn how to catch public transport (the train, bus, tram) by myself
• Where – to visit my friends
• Why – so I can go to see my friends without the help of my parents
• Who – me and my friends. The parents are also a ‘who’ as achieving this goal will mean less reliance on their transport support.

Goals will ideally be broad enough that you can make changes throughout the course of the plan, to use other types of services that would help achieve the goal. Here’s an example:

If you think your son would benefit from attending an autism support group to help with his social skills and give him opportunity to interact with his peers, the goal could be worded as “opportunity for social and community participation”, rather than specifically being about attendance at the autism group.

This way the goal is broad enough so that if your son attends the autism group and dislikes it, or doesn’t want to attend it in the first place; their goal could still be achieved by your son going to other activities, or therapies. Perhaps getting support to participate in a sporting activity would help him to achieve his goal.

When you’re preparing for your NDIS planning meeting, think about both your long-term and short-term goals. Your long-term goal might be to get a job, but perhaps to achieve it you will first need to focus on shorter-term goals of improving your communication skills or learning to travel on public transport independently. These short-term goals could help you to achieve your long-term goal.

Yooralla can support you with developing and achieving your NDIS goals in many ways, including:

• working with you (and/or your carer) one-on-one to explore and document your goals, your life and support needs; so you are prepared before your NDIS planning meeting
• with comprehensive NDIS information guides and workbooks
• delivering the supports in your NDIS plan
• helping you to understand what you’ve been funded for in your NDIS plan, and how you can use your funds to help you achieve your goals.