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 rather than maintaining a service, and that distinction decides what the budget will and will not fund.
The NDIS describes it as funding“for NDIS supports that help build your living skills and increase your independence and involvement in your community such as assessments, training or therapies”, and says plainly that therapy funding can be spent on“physiotherapy or occupational therapy”.
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 leave much less: getting on and off public transport, transferring without a hoist, walking to the shops and back.
So if physiotherapy keeps getting questioned, the goal wording is usually where to look first.
Self-managed or plan-managed changes who you can choose
This is the part that decides which physiotherapists she can choose from. The NDIS liststhree management options: self-management, plan management, and NDIA-management.
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. Its own guidance is explicit:“You can’t use unregistered providers for NDIS supports you have NDIA-managed funding for.”
We work with self-managed and plan-managed participants. We work with self-managed and plan-managed participants.
Why the tracking matters more here than anywhere else
Improved Daily Living is renewed on evidence, and the evidence is whatever the physiotherapist can show against the goal. Name the goal at the first session, measure it the same way each visit, move the program when the measurement moves, and the reassessment report is a summary of work already on file. Skip that and the report is written from memory the week before it is due.
Measuring it the same way each visit generally means the same physiotherapist each visit. So the question worth asking before the first appointment is not what they charge. It is what they will write down, how often they will measure it, and whether you will see 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, start there.
- 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. Email info@jxphysio.com.au and Jimmy will tell you what a visit costs against her plan.
If nobody has written down what she is working toward this plan period, that is the thing to fix now, not six weeks before the reassessment.
Our NDIS page covers how visits work, and fees and funding covers the rest.