Your First NDIS Planning Meeting — What to Expect and How to Prepare

For most families, the planning meeting is the moment the NDIS stops being paperwork and starts being real. It's where your family member's goals, daily challenges, and support needs get translated into an actual funded plan. It can feel high-stakes — because in a sense it is — but it's also just a conversation, and you can prepare for it.

What a planning meeting actually is

Once someone is found eligible for the NDIS, the National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIA) arranges a planning meeting. An NDIA planner, or someone from an NDIS partner organisation, runs the meeting with you. Its purpose is to talk through the participant's disability-related support needs and goals, and to work out what NDIS-funded supports fit that picture.

During the meeting you'll typically cover:

• Goals and support needs — what the participant wants to work towards and what gets in the way day to day
• The plan and budgets — what funding categories are proposed and why
• How the plan will be managed — self-managed, plan-managed, or NDIA-managed (agency-managed)
• Providers — recording which providers will be used and giving consent for them to access the plan
• The portal and app — how to use the myplace participant portal and the NDIS app once the plan is live

The planner then decides whether to approve the plan — they will do this if the supports fit the participant's situation and will help them work towards their goals. Sometimes approval needs to wait for further information or assessments first.

Who should come with you — and why it helps

You don't have to do this alone. The NDIS explicitly allows you to bring a support person: a family member, a friend, a support coordinator, or a recovery coach. Whoever knows the participant's day-to-day reality best is usually the right person to have in the room.

A second person in the meeting is useful for practical reasons — one person can talk while the other takes notes, or fills in gaps the participant might not think to mention under time pressure. It also means there's a witness to what was actually discussed and agreed, which can matter later if a plan needs to be queried or reviewed.

It is also completely fine to slow the meeting down. The NDIS is explicit about this: it's okay to ask the person running your plan meeting to stop, repeat, or explain things. If a term or process doesn't make sense, say so.

The goals conversation — how to make funding reflect real needs

This is the part families most often get wrong, not through any fault of their own — it's just an unfamiliar way of talking about a familiar situation. The NDIS builds funding around goals and support needs, not diagnoses. A diagnosis explains why support is needed; it doesn't by itself describe what a typical week actually looks like.

Some practical framing that tends to help (this is general preparation guidance, not medical or clinical advice):

• Describe a typical hard day, not just the diagnosis — what does the participant need help with from waking up to going to bed, and where does that help currently come from?
• Be specific about frequency and effort — "needs help showering every morning" is more useful to a planner than "has trouble with personal care"
• Include the impact on your support network — if family or friends are currently filling gaps, say so; unpaid support that isn't sustainable is relevant information
• Write draft goals in advance — short, plain-English statements of what the participant wants to work towards (for example, greater independence in the home, staying connected with community, or returning to study or work)

What gets decided in the meeting

Beyond goals, the meeting settles two practical things that shape how the plan works day to day:

• Budgets — the funding allocated across different support categories, based on what's discussed
• Plan management — whether the plan will be self-managed, plan-managed (a plan manager handles the paperwork), or NDIA-managed. Each option has different implications for choice of provider and administrative load — see our separate guide on self-managed, plan-managed, or NDIA-managed for a full comparison

You'll also give consent for the providers you've chosen to access the relevant parts of the plan, and you'll be shown how to use the myplace portal and NDIS app to check budgets and manage supports once the plan is live.

The three meeting formats

The NDIS offers flexibility in how the meeting happens:

• In person — at an NDIA office or an agreed location
• By phone — useful if travel is difficult or a face-to-face slot isn't available soon
• Virtually, via Microsoft Teams — a video call, which can make it easier to share documents on screen

None of these formats is officially "better" — choose whichever makes it easiest for the participant and their support person to focus and communicate clearly.

What happens straight after approval

Once the planner approves the plan, it becomes available in the participant portal and the NDIS app, and funded supports can start. For many participants — particularly those new to the NDIS, or with significant changes to their plan — a further plan implementation meeting is arranged to help put the plan into action: connecting with providers, setting up plan management, and working out next steps.

Under the Participant Service Guarantee, the NDIA aims to approve plans within 56 days of the planning meeting. If new information or evidence comes to light before the plan is finalised, you can still provide it — approval may simply be delayed while it's considered.

If, after the plan is approved, you disagree with what's in it, you have 3 months from the date of the written decision to request an internal review. If you're not satisfied with that outcome, the next step is an appeal to the Administrative Review Tribunal.

Bring this list

Submitting documents to the NDIA ahead of the meeting, where possible, can help speed up the process — you don't have to wait until you're in the room to hand things over.

If this is your very first plan and you haven't yet worked out whether the NDIS is even the right pathway for your family member, our guide on how to apply for the NDIS covers the access request that comes before this meeting. Once a plan is approved, our guide to NDIS budget categories explained walks through what the funding actually covers.