S7E09 - Fairness at Risk: How New Planning Reforms Could Reshape Everyday OT Practice

As the year winds down, many OTs are crawling toward the finish line rather than gliding over it. Last-minute calls for urgent functional assessments, section 100 reports and crisis planning keep landing on already full caseloads. The expectation that we can simply “bump it to the top” ignores the reality that there are only so many clinical hours available. Saying yes to every urgent request often means saying no to people who are already on our books and relying on us.

What is changing in NDIS planning Amid the everyday pressure, major changes to NDIS planning are quietly taking shape. The proposed model centres on support needs assessments that feed into an algorithm to produce a single overall budget. Instead of itemised funding built with a planner, participants would receive a total figure with far less clarity about how it was constructed. That assessment would sit alongside broad impairment categories that attempt to group thousands of disability types into just a handful of boxes.

On paper this seems neat and efficient. In practice it risks flattening people’s lives into scores and labels that do not reflect real-world function. Informal supports, housing, environment, co-occurring conditions and personal goals are hard to meaningfully capture in a standardised conversation and a set of drop-down options.

Why appeals may get harder not easier One of the most worrying elements is how people will be able to challenge decisions. Under the proposed approach, participants would not appeal the budget amount itself but instead request a review that may only result in another support needs assessment. If that assessment is based on the same incomplete picture, the outcome may barely shift.

The current wording that other evidence may be considered, rather than must be, is another red flag. Even when families manage to obtain detailed functional assessments or medical reports, there is no guarantee this material will meaningfully influence the budget. For many people with disability and their carers, the idea of being stuck in a loop of assessments with little transparency is deeply unsettling.

The limits of a structured conversation The language of a “structured conversation” sounds gentle and person centred, yet we know from practice that conversations alone rarely capture the full story. Many people minimise their needs to appear capable, particularly if they have had negative experiences asking for help. Others simply do not have the language to explain fatigue, executive function, sensory overload or fluctuating symptoms in a way that lands with a non-clinical listener.

Observation, collateral information and skilled clinical reasoning are crucial to understanding function and risk. A phone call or basic telehealth interview with someone who is not an allied health professional is unlikely to uncover subtle safety issues or the true amount of support provided behind the scenes by family. When those gaps are then fed into an algorithm, the budget that comes out the other end may be far removed from what is actually needed.

When algorithms and AI enter the scheme Algorithms are often presented as neutral and efficient, but they simply automate whatever assumptions and data are built into them. If the inputs are incomplete or biased, the outputs will be too. We already see AI tools in other areas confidently producing information that is partially or completely wrong.

In the NDIS context, these errors are not just annoying. They can mean a person cannot shower safely, maintain employment, access the community or continue therapy. This is not a space where “good enough on average” is acceptable, yet that is often how algorithmic tools are designed and tested.

Why diagnosis should not dictate budget Some commentary has suggested that people with similar diagnoses should receive similar budgets, and that variation is a sign of unfairness. For OTs, that framing ignores everything we know about occupational performance. T