Improve Daily Living With Your NDIS Plan | What the Funding Covers and How to Use It Well

Your NDIS plan may include a budget line called Improved Daily Living. It is one of the most useful parts of a plan, and one of the most misunderstood. This funding pays for skilled professionals who help you improve daily living, whether that means cooking a meal, showering safely, explaining what you need or getting through a morning without running out of energy.

Used well, it builds skills that stay with you long after the plan ends. Used without a plan, it can disappear into reports, travel time and sessions that never connect to real life.

This guide explains how the budget can help you improve daily living, what it pays for, how it differs from your Core supports, what changed in October 2026, and seven practical ways to get more from every funded hour.

This article is general information, not advice about your individual plan. Your Local Area Coordinator, support coordinator or plan manager can help with your specific situation.

What “Improved Daily Living” Means in Your NDIS Plan

Improved Daily Living sits inside your Capacity Building budget. Its purpose is to help you improve daily living skills and independence over time, rather than to pay for ongoing hands-on help.

You may see it described in a few ways. Older plans and invoices often say “CB Daily Activity” or “capacity building daily activities”. In the NDIS Support Catalogue it’s category 15. The Australian Government now calls these “improved daily living skills supports”. Searching any of these terms leads you to the same budget, so don’t let the different labels confuse you.

Three rules are worth knowing from the start:

• Funding is linked to your goals. Each support should connect to a goal in your plan and to your disability-related needs.
• It isn’t flexible across budgets. Capacity Building money can’t be moved to pay for Core supports such as support workers, and Core money can’t top it up.
• It mainly funds professional skills. Think occupational therapists, speech pathologists, physiotherapists, psychologists and therapy assistants, not general support work.

Professionals are only one part of the picture. Our guide to NDIS daily living skills covers how practical skills are built through everyday support.

Who Can Use Funding to Improve Daily Living?

Any NDIS participant can have this budget in their plan if the NDIA decides the supports are reasonable and necessary for their goals. It isn’t limited to one age group or disability type. In practice, it often helps:

• Young children with developmental delay or disability, through early childhood supports and family coaching.
• Teenagers and young adults preparing to leave school, start work or move out of the family home.
• Adults after a change in health, such as a stroke, brain injury or progressive condition, who need to relearn or adapt everyday tasks.
• People in shared or supported living who want to take on more of their own routines.

If your goals involve doing more for yourself, it’s worth asking whether funding to improve daily living belongs in your next plan.

What Funding to Improve Daily Living Can Pay For

Every plan is different, and there’s no single list of approved ways to improve daily living. What’s funded depends on what the NDIA decides is reasonable and necessary for you. That said, these supports are commonly paid from this budget:

What it usually doesn’t cover is just as important. The support worker who helps you shower each morning is normally paid from Core. The shower chair your OT recommends usually comes from your Capital budget for assistive technology. Everyday living costs, such as groceries or rent, are not NDIS supports at all.

Improved Daily Living vs Core Supports: Who Pays for What

This is where many participants and families get stuck. Both budgets can help you improve daily living, but they pay for different things. Here’s a simple way to think about it:

• Improved Daily Living pays someone to assess, teach or design a way of doing something.
• Core supports pay someone to help you do it regularly.

The two budgets work best together. A therapist’s strategy will only improve daily living if someone practises it with you between sessions, and that someone is often a support worker. For a broader view of how budgets fit together, see our explainer on NDIS core supports and capacity building budgets.

Improved Daily Living NDIS Examples: Three Real-World Scenarios

These are illustrative examples, not real clients. They show how Improved Daily Living skills supports and everyday support can combine to improve daily living in very different situations.

Sam, 24: learning to cook in shared living

Sam has an intellectual disability and has recently moved into a Supported Independent Living (SIL) home. His goal is to cook three dinners a week with only visual prompts.

• His OT uses two sessions to assess his kitchen skills, create photo recipe cards and show house staff how to use them.
• Staff practise one recipe with Sam three nights a week and note which steps he completed alone.
• At an eight-week review, Sam is cooking two meals with visual prompts only. The OT adds a third recipe.

Why it worked: the OT spent part of the funded time training staff. That meant Sam practised three times a week instead of once a fortnight.

Priya, 41: managing fatigue at home

Priya lives with multiple sclerosis. She wants to keep doing her own laundry and light meal preparation, but by mid-afternoon she’s exhausted.

• Her OT builds an energy conservation plan: sitting while preparing food, splitting tasks across the day and planning harder jobs for her best hours. The OT also recommends a perching stool, funded through assistive technology.
• A support worker paid from Core takes on vacuuming and bathroom cleaning, the tasks that drained her most.

Why it worked: Priya kept the tasks she valued and handed over the ones that cost her the most energy.

Leo, 7: calmer mornings at home

Leo is autistic. His family’s goal is a morning routine that doesn’t end in tears before school.

• Leo sees a speech pathologist and an OT, and his parents attend coaching sessions.
• Together they create a visual morning routine for the fridge, which his parents practise with him every day.

Why it worked: the parent coaching meant Leo’s progress didn’t depend on session time alone. When families learn the strategies, they can improve daily living for the whole household, not just the child.

The October 2026 Changes and Your Budget to Improve Daily Living

Funding rules have changed, and this budget is directly affected.

According to the Department of Health, Disability and Ageing, funding for improved daily living skills supports is being reduced by 10% from 1 October 2026. Social, economic and community participation supports face a larger reset of 50%. Here’s how the timing works:

• The change applies as plans are created or reassessed from 1 October 2026.
• It begins applying to plan renewals from 1 February 2027.
• You’ll be told how much your funding has been reduced when you receive your new plan.
• Other parts of your plan aren’t affected by this reset.

There’s an important safeguard for people with very high support needs. Participants who receive 24-hour funded supports, which can include many people living in SIL, can apply for a plan variation within 90 days if the reduced funding means their 24-hour supports can no longer be safely maintained.

What does 10% mean in practice? On a $10,000 budget, it’s $1,000. At the $193.99 hourly price limit for occupational therapy in the NDIS Pricing Schedule 2026–27, that’s about five hours of therapy. Five hours can be the difference between finishing a skill and stopping halfway. With less funding available to improve daily living, careful planning is more valuable than ever.

7 Smart Ways to Stretch Funding That Helps You Improve Daily Living

1. Turn vague goals into measurable ones

“Be more independent” is hard to work towards and harder to prove. “Make my own breakfast four mornings a week by June” gives your therapist a clear target. It also gives the NDIA clear evidence at your next reassessment.

2. Ask for a quote that shows every cost

Therapists can charge for travel, report writing and some work done outside sessions, as well as the session itself. Before you agree to a block of therapy, ask how many hours are direct sessions, how much is travel and how much is reporting. This shows you how much of the budget will actually go towards helping you improve daily living.

3. Get the home program in writing

Each session should end with something you can practise: a task card, a short video, a checklist. If the strategy only exists in the therapist’s notes, it can’t help you on the other six days of the week.

4. Use a therapy assistant for routine practice

Therapy assistants work under a therapist’s supervision and usually charge less than the therapist. Once your therapist has designed the program, ask whether some of the practice can be delivered this way.

5. Bring your support workers into the plan

Ask your therapist to spend a short, funded session showing your support workers or family how to follow the program. This is often the single best-value hour in the whole budget, because it multiplies every hour that comes after it. The people who see you every day are the ones who can help you improve daily living between appointments.

6. Track progress each month

Keep a one-page log: the goal, what you practised, what you can now do on your own and what’s still hard. It takes five minutes a month and makes conversations with therapists, and with the NDIA, much easier.

7. Request reports early and keep copies

Ask for progress reports six to eight weeks before your plan is due to end or be reassessed. Late reports often end up rushed, and a rushed report rarely shows your progress well. A clear report also explains what you still need to keep working on, which supports your case for continued funding.

Common Mistakes That Waste This Budget

• Ongoing weekly therapy with no end point. Every block of sessions should have a goal and a review date.
• Practising skills in a clinic that you need at home. Ask whether sessions can happen where the skill is actually used.
• Not checking your balance. Look at your spending regularly through the NDIS participant portal or app, or ask your plan manager.
• Short-notice cancellations. Cancellation charges may apply under your service agreement, so check the notice period.
• Expecting this budget to cover support workers. Hands-on daily help usually comes from Core, so plan for both budgets separately.

Before Your Plan Reassessment: A Quick Checklist

• Goals written in measurable terms
• Latest progress report from each therapist
• Your monthly progress log
• A list of skills you’ve gained and skills you still need
• Notes on what your support workers practise with you
• Your remaining balance and what it’s already committed to
• Any safety concerns if funding falls, especially if you receive 24-hour supports

How Care Wise Connection Helps You Improve Daily Living Between Sessions

Care Wise Connection isn’t a therapy provider, and we’ll always be upfront about that. Where we can help is in the hours between therapy sessions, which is where most people improve daily living skills in practice.

When you share your therapist’s program with us, our team providing assistance with daily living can work alongside it: the recipe cards, the visual routine, the energy plan. The same applies in our Supported Independent Living homes, where daily routines offer natural chances to practise.

If you’d like to talk through how everyday support could work with your therapy goals, contact the Care Wise Connection team on 0272 640 777.