How to prepare for an NDIS plan review
What reviewers are looking for now, and how to walk in ready
An NDIS plan review is a high-stakes meeting for a busy family. The good news: the things reviewers want to see are the same things you already know about your child. The job is to bring them into one room, on time, in a shape someone else can read.
You know your child better than anyone else in that room. Plan reviews work best when the meeting is built around your evidence, not theirs.
Plan reviews used to lean heavily on a diagnosis and a thick stack of reports. They still ask for both. But the bar has shifted. Reviewers are weighing function more, and single-snapshot reports less. They want a picture of your child across home, school and therapy. A picture that holds together.
This is a guide to building that picture in the weeks before your meeting, so you walk in calmer and the conversation can stay where it should: your child.
What reviewers are looking for now
Three things carry most of the weight in the room.
- Function in everyday life. What does a typical morning look like? What does school pick-up look like? What can your child do independently, and where do they need support to participate?
- Continuity over time. One report from a hard day tells one story. Six months of small observations tell a more honest one. Continuity is what separates a plan that holds from a plan that gets cut.
- Alignment across the village. When your paediatrician, OT, speech pathologist and you are describing the same child in compatible language, the case practically makes itself.
Function over diagnosis. Continuity over snapshots. The family's view of the child now carries weight.
How indi helps: indi was built around the picture of function across a child's real life. Quick voice notes, photos, what therapy went well, what school flagged. It adds up over months, so when the review comes you have continuity, not a last-minute scramble.
The reports and documents to gather
Start two to three months before your review date. Some of these take weeks to come back, especially if a clinician needs to write a new letter.
Clinical reports
- Most recent paediatrician letter or diagnostic report
- Therapy progress reports from the last 6 to 12 months (speech, OT, psych, physio, whatever applies)
- A Functional Capacity Assessment if one has been done
- Goals and outcomes from your current plan, with notes on what was achieved
Everyday-life evidence
- Notes or communication books from kindy, daycare or school
- A few short examples of a typical day. The wins and the hard parts.
- Photos or short videos of how your child engages with everyday activities
- Anything significant that changed since the last plan
One practical tip from families: ask your treating clinicians for their reports six to eight weeks out. They are busy, and a polite early ask is the kindest way to get a strong letter back in time.
How indi helps: forward an email from your therapist or your child's school and indi pulls out what matters automatically. Reports, photos, communication books, and your own observations all sit in one timeline. Nothing gets lost between providers who never spoke.
Your view of your child is evidence too
Parents often arrive at plan reviews carrying a thick folder of other people's reports and a quiet worry that their own view doesn't count. It does, and the framework has actually moved toward it.
Clinicians see your child for an hour a week. Function gets built in the other 167. At home, at school, in the playground. The reviewer cannot see those hours without you.
What helps is observation, not interpretation. Concrete examples are more useful than adjectives. A sentence like “On Wednesday morning Sam refused to leave the car for kindy and we sat for thirty minutes” says more than “Sam struggles with transitions.” Reviewers can do the interpretation themselves once they have the picture.
How indi helps: if you have a child, you are already capturing evidence every day. indi gives you a quiet place to drop those observations in voice or text, so the moments that mattered are still there when the review comes around.
The week before the meeting
By this point you don't need new information. You need the information you have to be findable, in order, and short enough to talk through.
- Pull together a short summary. One page if you can. The goals you set last plan, what changed, what didn't, what you are asking for this time.
- Pick three or four examples. Specific, dated moments that show what you mean by the support your child needs. Reviewers remember stories.
- Decide who is talking when. If a clinician is joining, agree in advance who covers what so you don't repeat each other or run out of time.
- Bring questions. Write them down. A meeting where you walk out with your three questions answered is a good meeting.
If the review goes a way you didn't expect, you have appeal rights. Don't sign anything you aren't ready to sign in the room.
How indi helps: families using indi walk into plan meetings calmer. Readier. With everything in one place. Reports, observations, your child's goals and wins, all searchable on your phone so you can find the example you need when the reviewer asks.