Nine questions worth asking any NDIS provider

Most people choose a provider on availability and price. Neither tells you what matters, which is whether the arrangement still works in six months. These are the questions that do, and what a good answer sounds like.

1. Who exactly will be coming, and can I meet them first?

If the answer is a shrug or “whoever is rostered”, you have learnt something important. A provider who matches people deliberately will have a name for you within a day or two, and will offer a meeting before the first shift with no obligation on either side. Ask whether that meeting is free. It should be.

2. What happens when that person is sick?

Every provider has a backup answer. The useful question is whether the backup person will have read anything about you before they arrive. Ask how the provider keeps notes about you, who can see them, and whether a replacement worker gets time to read them before the shift. “We will send someone” is not an answer. “We will send Sam, who has covered for Alex before and has your plan” is.

3. What is your turnover like?

Awkward to ask and worth asking. Support worker turnover in Australia is high, and every departure is a person you have to start again with. A provider who knows the number and tells you is being straight with you. A provider who has never thought about it is telling you something too. Follow up with why workers leave, and what the provider does to keep them.

4. How do you handle it if the match is wrong?

You should be able to say a worker is not right for you without having to justify it, defend it, or feel you have caused a problem. Ask what the process is. The good answer is short: tell us, we change it, no explanation required. If the answer involves a meeting to “work through the issues”, think about whether you want to have that meeting every time.

5. What are your minimum shift lengths?

This decides whether a provider wants your work. A provider built for short shifts will treat long ones as awkward, and the reverse. There is no right answer, but there is a right fit. If you need substantial, regular hours, a provider that runs on one-hour visits will always be squeezing you in. If you need an hour twice a week, a provider built for full days may not be able to staff it reliably. Ask, and believe the answer.

6. What are your qualifications, and do you check them?

Ask what the staff hold and whether the provider verifies it. At minimum, every worker should have a current NDIS Worker Screening Check, first aid, and the NDIS Worker Orientation Module. Beyond that, ask who leads the service. A provider led by someone with a clinical or social work qualification tends to run differently from one led by a roster. That is not a rule, but it is a pattern.

7. Are you a registered NDIS provider?

Registration is checkable on the NDIS Commission’s public provider register. You do not have to take anyone’s word for it, including ours. Registration means the provider has been audited against the NDIS Practice Standards and is bound by the Code of Conduct, with the Commission able to act if they fall short. Unregistered providers can be excellent, but you can only use them if your plan is self-managed or plan-managed, and the safeguards are thinner. Know which you are dealing with.

8. What will you not do?

The most revealing question on the list. A provider that says “we do everything” either has not thought about it or is prepared to take work it cannot do well. A provider that can say “we do not do plan management, we do not do short scattered shifts, and if you need behaviour support we will refer you to someone who does” has boundaries, and boundaries are what make the rest of the promises believable.

9. What happens if I want to leave?

Ask about notice periods, exit fees and what happens to your notes. Under the NDIS rules, a service agreement can set a notice period, but it should be reasonable and clearly written down before you start. If a provider is vague about how you leave, be cautious about how you join. A provider confident in its work does not need to make leaving difficult.

Two questions to ask yourself afterwards

Did they ask you anything? A provider that spent the whole conversation talking about themselves will run the service the same way. And did the answers sound rehearsed or specific? The honest ones usually include a limitation somewhere. If every answer was perfect, ask again in six months.

If you want to put these questions to us, the people who answer are on the team page, and you can get in touch any time. Support coordinators looking for a provider with capacity can go straight to our coordinator page.

Common questions