Exploring publicly available National Disability Insurance Scheme cerebral palsy data

Published

Wednesday, December 18, 2024 - 12:00 PM

Our team were interested in understanding how people with cerebral palsy (CP) use their National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) funding and wrote a paper about it.     

The NDIS provides funding to Australians with disabilities to help them live ‘an ordinary life’. However, we don’t know very much about NDIS funding for people with CP. By examining publicly available information on the NDIS website, this project investigated NDIS plan payments, and what people’s funding was spent on.

There were 17,575 people with CP who were NDIS participants in March 2023. The average NDIS plan payment for people with CP was $138,000/year. Payments got bigger with age, with a particular increase noted in plan payments for adolescents as they transitioned to and through young adulthood. Most funding was put towards core supports – or everyday activities (average $103,000 per year), and less to capacity building (average $40,000 per year). There was not very much funding put towards preparing for employment or lifelong learning goals. There were large differences in NDIS plan payments dependent upon where people lived within a city, or in different rural areas.

Further research is now needed using more detailed information from the NDIS about NDIS plans to explore and explain these findings.

Click here for access to the full journal article