NDIS support coordination is changing: what the new SCC service means

From 1 July 2028, support coordination as it works today is replaced by a new commissioned NDIS Support Coordination and Connection (SCC) service, and eligible participants will no longer hold support coordination funding in their plan — the NDIA will fund an appointed organisation in each region instead. Nothing changes right now: the design is open for feedback until 2 October 2026, and current support coordination arrangements continue until the new service starts.

This article is for support coordinators, psychosocial recovery coaches, plan managers and the families who work alongside them. It sets out what the Department of Health, Disability and Ageing and the NDIA have actually proposed in their Support Coordination and Connection Reform consultation paper, published on 7 September 2026, and what is worth doing in the four weeks the consultation is open.

What the government has announced

In the 2026–27 Budget the government announced that the NDIA would establish a commissioned SCC service by 1 July 2028. Commissioning is the process of planning, funding, procuring and overseeing services — so instead of each participant buying support coordination with plan funding, the NDIA would contract organisations to deliver it and pay them directly. The reform sits inside a wider rethink of what the paper calls “intermediary supports”: support coordinators, psychosocial recovery coaches, Local Area Coordinators, Early Childhood Partners and plan management.

The scale is worth holding onto. The paper notes the new model would replace the current arrangement in which participants use plan funding to purchase support coordination from one of approximately 11,000 support coordinators across Australia. The reasons given for change are specific: inconsistent service quality, unclear role boundaries between intermediaries, conflicts of interest where organisations provide both coordination and direct services, variable workforce capability, access problems in regional, rural and other thin markets, duplication across the disability ecosystem, and an hourly fee-for-service model that the paper says results in over and under servicing.

The indicative timeline in the paper runs:

• Mid to late 2026 — designing the future service model with participants and the sector, which is what this consultation is doing.
• 2027 — commissioning, meaning the formal procurement of SCC providers.
• Early 2028 — supporting participants and providers ahead of the transition.
• From 1 July 2028 — the new SCC service commences.

All of this sits under the new NDIS laws. Parliament passed the Securing the NDIS for Future Generations amendment on 19 August 2026 and the Governor-General signed it on 20 August, with changes rolling out in stages. The NDIA’s notice about this particular consultation is on its have your say page for the SCC service.

Two service levels instead of three

The proposed model has two levels, replacing the current three levels of support coordination plus psychosocial recovery coaching:

• SCC — for participants who need ongoing support to connect with and coordinate supports and services.
• SCC+ — for participants with very complex circumstances: intensive coordination needs, significant safety considerations, complex support environments, multiple interacting service systems, or heightened risk of disengagement. The paper says SCC+ would be limited to a small proportion of participants and would likely involve more contact hours and specialist workforce skills.

If your caseload is mostly specialist support coordination, SCC+ is the part of the paper to read closely — and the part where evidence from your own files will carry the most weight in a submission.

Who would be eligible

Not every participant would receive SCC. The paper lists the factors that would determine who does: decision-making capacity, safety risk, stability of formal and informal supports, stability and predictability of support needs, understanding of how the NDIS and other support systems work, engagement with multiple support systems, and risk of disengagement. Final eligibility criteria will be agreed by government, and the NDIA and the department are still working through how those factors apply to people planned under the current approach compared with people who complete a support needs assessment under New Framework Planning.

Participants who are not eligible for SCC may be able to use other coordination supports, and the paper points to Local Area Coordinators and Early Childhood Partners as current examples of that.

What the SCC service would do — and what it would not

Three functions are proposed: collaboration, meaning building a shared understanding of a participant and their goals; connection, meaning strengthening links to community, mainstream, foundational and NDIS supports; and coordination, meaning making supports work together, addressing barriers and escalating issues to the NDIA. In practice the service would connect participants with supports, coordinate arrangements across services, support informed decision-making, help people understand and implement their plans, build navigation skills and confidence, identify emerging risks, support service transitions, strengthen support networks, and help participants stay connected to services and community.

The list of what it would not do is just as useful, because that is where the current role-boundary blur gets settled. The SCC service would not make decisions on behalf of participants, replace supported decision-making arrangements, provide advocacy, determine NDIS eligibility, manage participant finances, provide crisis response, undertake regulatory or investigative functions, take on responsibilities held by health, housing, justice or education systems, or routinely provide other NDIS-funded supports.

The conflict of interest line providers should read twice

One row in the paper’s summary of key changes matters more than the rest for anyone delivering both coordination and hands-on supports. Today, support coordinators can also provide other NDIS supports. Under the proposal, SCC services and workers could not. Conflicts of interest where a single organisation does both is named as a current problem, and conflict of interest controls appear on the list of proposed quality and safeguarding elements, alongside workforce capability requirements, minimum practice standards, complaints and feedback mechanisms, performance monitoring and reporting, and registration or accreditation requirements.

For a housing and supports provider like us, that separation is a reasonable thing to plan around. Vitality Community Care delivers Supported Independent Living, Specialist Disability Accommodation and daily supports — we do not deliver support coordination, so a referral to one of our homes sits at arm’s length from the person coordinating a participant’s plan. If your organisation does both, the transition period is the time to work out which side of that line each part of the business sits on.

How the service would be delivered: regions and lead organisations

Under the commissioned approach the NDIA would contract organisations to deliver SCC within defined geographic areas. Two approaches remain on the table: a lead-organisation model, where one provider is responsible for delivering or coordinating all SCC services in a service area, and a multi-provider model where providers pool resources and expertise across or within regions. The paper says early thinking prefers the lead organisation, on the view that it is more likely to provide sufficient service capacity, raise quality, ease the transition and improve safeguarding.

How the regions get drawn is still open. Options under consideration include Primary Health Network regions, Local Hospital Network regions, the regions used for Partners in the Community services, or Australian Bureau of Statistics Statistical Area Level 4 regions. Specialist and thin-market delivery could run through partnerships or subcontracting with specialist providers, or regionally tailored arrangements, drawing on the expertise of Disability Representative and Carer Organisations, Aboriginal Community Controlled Organisations and Health Organisations, and Remote Community Connectors.

The payment model is up for discussion too. The paper is direct that the current hourly fee-for-service arrangement has limitations, and says a commissioned service is an opportunity to design payments that support a sustainable workforce, continuity of services and innovation, without creating incentives that limit access for particular groups of participants or push toward too much or too little support.

What it means for participants

Until 1 July 2028, nothing changes: participants keep accessing support coordination under existing arrangements. From that date, eligible participants would no longer be given funding in their plan to pay a support coordinator — the NDIA would fund the SCC provider directly, and participants would work with the organisation commissioned for their area, so there would be fewer approved providers to choose between. There may also be a change in who a participant works with if their current coordinator is not part of the local SCC organisation. Continuity of trusted relationships is listed as one of three implementation priorities, alongside workforce quality and provider readiness.

What it means for support coordinators

The NDIA expects a formal procurement process before the service launches in mid-2028. Some current support coordination and psychosocial recovery coaching organisations may transition into SCC providers; others will no longer deliver these services from 1 July 2028, and the paper notes there may be opportunities for current support coordination staff to move into SCC worker roles inside commissioned organisations. Psychosocial recovery coaches are flagged as a workforce group that could potentially transition to deliver SCC for participants with psychosocial disability.

Three things are worth doing now rather than in 2027. Get your outcomes documentation in order, because performance reporting through contract arrangements is an explicit feature of the future state. Make your local knowledge and referral pathways legible on paper — one of the consultation questions asks how local knowledge and community connection should be defined and assessed. And decide early whether your organisation would bid as a lead organisation, partner into someone else’s bid, or step away from the function.

What to do in the next four weeks

• Read the consultation paper — standard, Easy Read and Auslan versions are all published — and answer the questions where you hold real evidence. Thin markets, complex and overlapping needs, and transition arrangements are where practitioner detail is scarce.
• Lodge a written or video submission, including in Auslan, before the consultation closes at 11.59pm AEST on 2 October 2026. Questions go to SCCreform@health.gov.au.
• If you support anyone in Supported Independent Living, the separate consultation on a possible commissioning approach for part of the SIL market closes earlier, on 13 September 2026.
• Check that every SIL provider on your caseload is registered, or has applied, before 1 October 2026. Our guide to the mandatory SIL registration deadline covers what to ask for.
• Give participants and families the plain version: support coordination continues as it is until 1 July 2028, and they can have a say now in what replaces it.

What has not changed for housing referrals

None of this alters how a home and living referral works today. The evidence a request needs is the same — our guide to the evidence behind a home and living request walks through it — and so is the process for referring a participant to a SIL vacancy. Where a participant is considering a move, changing SIL providers mid-plan sets out the sequencing. You can filter current SIL and SDA vacancies by state, bedrooms and design category, and every placement remains subject to availability and suitability. The quickest way to start is our referral form, or call 1300 395 852 and ask for intake.

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