What is Improved Daily Living, and what can it actually buy?
Improved Daily Living is a Capacity Buildingbudget in an NDIS plan, and it is where most therapy sits — physiotherapy, occupational therapy, speech pathology, exercise physiology. Its job is building skill and independence, not maintaining a service.
That distinction decides almost everything about what it will and will not fund.
What it usually covers
- Physiotherapy assessment and therapy
- Therapy reports written for a plan reassessment
- Training a support worker or family member in a program
- Work toward a specific, named goal in the plan
What it usually doesn’t
- Day-to-day help with personal care. That is Core support, a different budget.
- Equipment. Assistive technology has its own funding, though a therapist may be the one who assesses for it.
- Anything that cannot be tied back to a goal written in the plan. This is the one that catches people.
Why the goal wording matters so much
Every service funded from Improved Daily Living has to connect to a goal in the plan. Plans that say “improve independence” and nothing more leave a lot of room for argument at review time. Plans that name something concrete — getting on and off public transport, transferring without a hoist, walking to the shops and back — leave much less.
So if physiotherapy keeps getting questioned, the problem is often upstream of the physiotherapy. It is the goal.
Self-managed or plan-managed changes who you can choose
This is the part that matters most for picking a physiotherapist, and it is rarely explained.
Plan-managed: a plan manager pays the invoices, and you can use providers whether or not they are NDIS-registered. The plan manager handles the paperwork.
Self-managed: you pay and claim back, and you have the widest choice of any option.
Agency-managed: the NDIA pays providers directly, and you can only use registered providers.
We work with self-managed and plan-managedparticipants. We are not a registered provider and say so plainly, which means agency-managed plans are not a fit — worth knowing before anyone spends time on it.
How to get physiotherapy funded from it
- Check the plan for a goal it attaches to. Mobility, transfers, community access, falls, independence at home. If there is no goal, that is the first conversation, not the last.
- Ask for an assessment. A physiotherapist can write to the functional impact and what therapy would change. That letter is the evidence base.
- Do not wait for the review. Existing Improved Daily Living funding can generally be used on therapy now if it maps to a goal.
- Line up the report early. See what your physio’s report should say.
Our fees align with the NDIS Pricing Arrangements and Price Limits, so claims against the budget are clean. What a visit costs your particular plan is a one-minute phone conversation.
Our NDIS page covers how visits work, and fees and funding covers the rest.