What complex support needs means
Every participant has a disability that affects daily life. Complex support needs describes situations where several things are happening at once, often across more than one service system, and where things can go wrong quickly without close coordination. Common factors include:
- Mental ill health or a psychosocial disability alongside another disability
- Unstable housing, homelessness or a risk of losing your home
- Contact with the justice system, including custody or community orders
- Involvement with child protection
- Alcohol or other drug use
- Frequent hospital admissions, or a long hospital stay with nowhere suitable to go
- Behaviours of concern, or regulated restrictive practices
The complex support needs pathway
The NDIA set up a complex support needs pathway so participants in these situations work with planning staff who have specialised knowledge and smaller caseloads, rather than the general planning process. The aim is a plan that reflects the whole situation and links in the other systems involved.
The NDIA also has staff who work with hospitals and with the justice system, to help participants move between those settings and the community. If you are in hospital or custody, ask whether the NDIA's liaison staff can be involved.
Specialist support coordination
Plans for people with complex support needs often include specialist support coordination, level 3. A specialist support coordinator is usually a qualified practitioner such as a psychologist, occupational therapist or social worker. They design how your services fit together, help resolve crises and reduce risks. The 2026/27 price limit is $190.54 an hour in most of Australia.
Specialist support coordination is generally funded for a limited time, with the aim of stabilising things and building a support network that can carry on.
Where the NDIS stops and other systems start
Complex situations often involve gaps between systems. The NDIS funds disability supports. Health, mental health, housing, child protection and justice systems remain responsible for their own areas, and the NDIA will not fund supports that are another system's responsibility.
For example, if you are in custody the justice system is responsible for your day to day care and safety, but the NDIS can still fund some disability related supports, including help to plan for your release. A specialist support coordinator's job is to make these systems work together for you.
Supports often in these plans
- Specialist behaviour support and a behaviour support plan, which must come from a registered provider where regulated restrictive practices are used
- Psychosocial recovery coaching for a psychosocial disability
- Medium term accommodation while a long term home is arranged
- Home and living supports, including Supported Independent Living, which must be delivered by a registered provider since 1 July 2026
- Higher intensity support workers with the skills your situation needs
2026 changes that matter here
Since 1 October 2026, people who receive 24 hour disability support and have $215,030 or more across daily life, home and living and community participation before the funding reset can ask for a plan variation within 90 days of the reset being applied, so that 24 hour care stays safe. If you are in a crisis or emergency, or have experienced fraud, you can ask for a plan variation rather than waiting for a reassessment.
From 1 July 2028 a new support coordination and connection service begins, and support coordination will no longer be paid from your plan. Until then it works as it does now.