What evidence does the NDIS need for a home and living supports request?

The NDIA needs recent evidence from a relevant treating professional — most often an occupational therapist — that explains the participant’s functional capacity, their daily support needs including how often and when support is needed each day, and the impact of their disability on daily life and housing needs. There is no single mandatory form: the quality and specificity of that evidence is what carries the request.

This guide is written for support coordinators and allied health professionals putting a home and living request together in 2026 — what the NDIA is actually looking for, what has changed, and where requests commonly come unstuck.

The supporting evidence form is gone — the evidence still matters

In October 2025 the NDIA retired the Home and Living Supporting Evidence Form. It had been an optional tool rather than a requirement, and the agency was clear that retiring it did not change what evidence is needed or how it is submitted.

In practice this shifts the burden. When a form existed, it gave people a structure to follow and prompted them to answer questions they might otherwise have skipped. Without it, a request is only as strong as the reports attached to it. A well-structured occupational therapy report that walks through a typical 24 hours now does the work the form used to scaffold.

What “good evidence” looks like to the NDIA

The NDIA describes good evidence as recent and written by a relevant treating professional — someone who knows the participant, not a one-off assessor with no history. Beyond that, evidence for a home and living request needs to cover three things clearly:

• Functional capacity — what the participant can and cannot do because of their disability. Not a diagnosis list; a description of function.
• Daily support needs — what support is required, how often, and at what times of day or night. This is the detail that most directly shapes a roster and therefore the funding.
• Impact on daily life and housing needs — why the current living arrangement is not meeting those needs, and what features or supports would.

The NDIA publishes its expectations for allied health reports on its plan reassessment report guidance and its guide to report writing. Both are worth sending to a treating therapist before they start drafting, rather than after a report comes back too general to use.

Be specific about time, not just task

The most common weakness in home and living evidence is describing what support a participant needs without describing when and for how long. “Requires assistance with personal care” tells a planner very little. “Requires two-person assistance with transfers and showering, approximately 45 minutes each morning, and active overnight support for repositioning at roughly two-hourly intervals” describes a roster.

A useful exercise with the treating therapist is to map a typical weekday and a typical weekend day hour by hour, including overnight. Note where support is one-to-one, where it can be shared with other residents, and where it must be delivered by someone with specific training. That last point matters if the participant needs high intensity supports such as complex bowel care, enteral feeding or tracheostomy management, which carry their own skills descriptor requirements.

First request versus changing supports the participant already has

The evidence bar is framed differently depending on the situation, and mixing the two up wastes months.

For a first request, the evidence needs to explain the whole picture — functional capacity, daily support needs and housing needs — from the ground up. Assume the reader knows nothing about the participant.

For a change to supports already funded, the NDIA expects evidence dated since the current plan was approved that explains what has significantly changed: new things the participant can or cannot do for themselves, changes in functional capacity, and how that changes their daily life and housing needs. A report that simply restates the original request, or a report predating the current plan, is unlikely to move a change of situation forward.

Separate SIL, SDA and the rest of the request

Home and living is an umbrella. Underneath it sit distinct supports that are assessed separately, and evidence that blurs them makes the planner’s job harder:

• Supported Independent Living (SIL) funds the people — the support workers who assist the participant in their home, including any overnight arrangement.
• Specialist Disability Accommodation (SDA) funds the dwelling — a home built to an approved design category for participants with extreme functional impairment or very high support needs.
• Individualised Living Options, home modifications and assistive technology each have their own evidence expectations again.

A participant can be funded for one without the other. Where you are seeking both, address each in its own clearly headed section of the report so the reasoning for each is visible on its own.

Which submission pathway applies

Evidence generally reaches the NDIA through one of three routes, and the right one depends on where the participant sits in their plan cycle:

• At a scheduled plan reassessment — the cleanest path when the plan is approaching its end date. Have the reports finished before the reassessment conversation, not after it.
• With a change of situation request — when circumstances have changed significantly mid-plan: a hospital admission, a carer no longer able to continue, a decline in function, or an unsafe living arrangement.
• With a request for a review of a decision — where a previous request was not funded and you have grounds and evidence to challenge the decision.

Timeframes vary with the complexity of the request, the quality of the evidence and NDIA workload, and can run to several months from first report to funded supports appearing in a plan. Building the evidence well before a reassessment is the single most useful thing a coordinator can do with the time available.

Where requests commonly come unstuck

• Stale reports. A functional capacity assessment from two plans ago does not describe the participant today.
• Diagnosis without function. The NDIA funds support needs arising from disability, not the diagnosis itself.
• No overnight detail. If active overnight support is needed, the evidence has to say so explicitly and explain why a sleepover arrangement would not be sufficient.
• Risk described vaguely. Where there is risk to the participant or others, describe the behaviour, its frequency, its triggers and what response it requires. If a behaviour support plan exists, reference it.
• Housing needs left implicit. If the current home is unsuitable, say what specifically makes it unsuitable — access, layout, distance from supports, or an arrangement that has broken down.
• No participant voice. The participant’s own goals and preferences about where and with whom they live belong in the request, not just the clinician’s view.

A checklist before you submit

• Reports are dated within the relevant window and signed by a treating professional.
• A typical weekday and weekend day are described hour by hour, including overnight.
• Support ratios are stated, with any need for one-to-one or two-person support explained.
• Any high intensity or nursing-delegated tasks are named specifically.
• SIL, SDA and any other supports are addressed in separate, clearly labelled sections.
• The participant’s stated goals and housing preferences are included in their own words.
• Risks, incidents and hospital admissions in the current plan period are documented with dates.

Where a provider fits in

Providers cannot write the clinical evidence, but they can help you ground it. If you are exploring options for a participant, a provider can talk through what a roster might realistically look like for the support needs you are describing, and what vacancies exist — always subject to availability and suitability. You can browse current SIL and SDA vacancies across Victoria, New South Wales and Western Australia, or send the details through our referral form and our team will come back to you about fit.

For the current rules on provider registration and safeguards — relevant when you are advising a participant on choosing between providers — the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission sets out the mandatory registration requirements that have applied to SIL providers since 1 July 2026.

This article is general information for support coordinators and families, not clinical or legal advice. For the current rules and forms, check ndis.gov.au.