There is a story going around that people are being pushed off self-management and onto Agency-managed funding, losing control to the NDIA. I looked at the numbers, and what is quietly happening might be worse.
Over the last four years, Agency (NDIA) managed funding has not gone up. It has fallen, from around 14% of plans to about 6%. Self-management has slipped a little too, from roughly 30% to 25%. The share that has ballooned is plan management, from 56% to more than 68%.
So people are not being marched to the Agency. The money is drifting to the paid middle layer, and self-management is quietly getting harder to hold onto.
And it truly is getting harder. If you self-manage now, you carry more than you used to. Five years of records. Single claim uploads, which plan-managed and Agency-managed participants do not have to do the same way. Digital systems built for providers. And if you directly employ your own support workers, you are legally their employer, which can mean holding your own workers compensation insurance. None of that lands on people who go through a provider or a plan manager.
There is also a newer rule that lets the NDIA refuse or remove self-management where it decides there is an “unreasonable risk.” To its credit, the Department says removing self-management should be “a last resort,” and the rule cannot be based on your disability type or how big your plan is. But the criteria are new, from late 2024 and early 2025, so how consistently they get applied is still an open question, and the disability community has already flagged worry that they could quietly reduce choice and control and erode reasonable and necessary definitions.
Which stings a bit, because the NDIA’s own research says self-management is good for people. Better quality of life, more social participation, more choice and control, more independence. The main barriers it found were time and the admin load. In other words, the exact things that are getting heavier.
Self-management is where choice and control actually live. If we make it heavier and quietly discourage it, we do not hand people to the Agency, we hand them to a middle layer, and we call it choice.
The fix is not complicated to describe. Make self-managing lighter. Take the admin weight off so more people can keep hold of their own plan, instead of giving it up because the paperwork won. A tool can add up your funding, keep your evidence, and flag what is running low, so the decisions stay yours. You press the button, always you.
Financial independence can strengthen independence more broadly.
References
- NDIA Plan Management data and NDIS Quarterly Reports (June 2022, June 2024, March 2025, March 2026) — the management-type trend
- NDIS Act 2013 s.44 and the Management of Funding Rules 2024 and 2025
- DSS Management of Funding Rules Information Sheet — “last resort”
- NDIA self-management research
The management-type trend is the important correction: the shift is toward plan management, not toward the Agency.