Getting Started with the NDIS in Melbourne

Step one: your plan

Everything starts with an NDIS plan. If you do not have one yet, the NDIS is on 1800 800 110, and in Melbourne you will be connected with a Local Area Coordinator (LAC) for your part of the city. The LAC helps you apply, works out what supports are reasonable and necessary, and puts the plan together. If you already have a plan, the first page tells you how it is managed, and that decides which providers you can use.

How your plan is managed matters

• Self-managed: you pay providers and claim from the NDIS yourself. You can use any provider, registered or not.
• Plan-managed: a plan manager pays the invoices for you and keeps the books. You can use any provider, registered or not.
• NDIA-managed: the agency pays, and you can only use registered providers.

Asina is an unregistered provider, so we support self-managed and plan-managed participants. If you are agency-managed and would like to work with us, you can ask for plan management at your next plan review, and it does not cost you anything from your other budgets. Our plain-English guide to plan management explains it in more detail.

What Melbourne offers on top of the NDIS

Victoria has a few things worth knowing about that sit alongside your plan.

• Access Travel Pass: free travel on Melbourne's trains, trams and buses for people whose disability means they cannot use a myki. Public Transport Victoria handles applications.
• Multi Purpose Taxi Program: subsidised taxi fares for Victorians with a severe and permanent disability who cannot use public transport. Apply through Commercial Passenger Vehicles Victoria.
• Companion Card: a second ticket at no charge for your support worker at many Melbourne venues, from the MCG to the zoo.
• Low-floor trams and level-access stops: not every stop is accessible yet, but the PTV app shows which ones are, and the train network is mostly step-free with staff assistance.

Getting support underway

Once you know how your plan is managed, getting started with Asina takes a few days, not weeks.

• Call 0434 786 381, email hello@asina.com.au, or sign up online in about six minutes.
• We check your funding covers the supports you are after, so there are no surprises.
• We send a service agreement in plain English, and you sign it on your phone.
• You meet a practitioner near you. If it is a good fit, support starts. If not, we try again.

Everything after that lives in the My Asina app: your schedule, shift notes, invoices and support plan. Our Melbourne team is led by Hayley Harris, and she is happy to talk any of this through before you decide anything. Here is our Melbourne page.