How to Prepare for an NDIS Planning Meeting

How do I prepare for an NDIS planning meeting?

If you’ve got a planning meeting coming up and you’re already feeling that tight, dreading feeling in your chest, you are not overreacting.

A 2023 survey by People with Disability Australia found that around 62% of people who’d been to an NDIS planning meeting said they found it difficult. More than a third, 34.71%, called it very difficult. That’s not a small unlucky group. That’s most people.

So if preparing for yours feels like preparing for a fight, that’s because for a lot of people, it kind of is. Let’s make it less of one.

Why planning meetings feel so hard

Planning meetings put a lot of weight on one conversation. You’re meant to explain your whole life, your support needs, your goals, and what “reasonable and necessary” means for you, often to someone you’ve never met, in under an hour.

That’s a strange ask for anyone. It’s an even stranger ask when you’re also managing pain, fatigue, sensory overwhelm, or the sheer exhaustion of having explained this all before.

The difficulty isn’t a sign you’re doing it wrong. It’s a sign the format is hard. Knowing that going in takes some of the pressure off.

What actually helps before you walk in

The NDIS’s own guidance says the same thing advocates have been saying for years: preparation and support both make a real difference. A few things worth doing before the day.

Write your goals down first, in your own words. Not NDIS language, your language. What do you actually want to be able to do. You can always translate it into planner-speak together in the meeting.

Bring someone if you can. A family member, friend, support coordinator or advocate. The NDIS explicitly allows this, and having a second set of ears means you’re not the only one holding the whole conversation in your head afterwards.

Gather your evidence ahead of time rather than scrambling on the day. Reports, letters from allied health, anything that backs up what you’re asking for. Sharing it before the meeting can actually speed the whole process up.

Know it’s okay to slow things down. You are allowed to ask the planner to stop, repeat, or explain something in plain English. That’s not you being difficult. That’s you making sure the plan that gets written down is actually accurate.

During the meeting itself

Keep a written list in front of you. Under stress, it is genuinely hard to remember everything you meant to say, and a list means you don’t have to hold it all in your head.

If something feels rushed, say so. “Can we slow down for a second” is a completely reasonable sentence to say out loud in a planning meeting.

Ask what happens next before you leave. When will you hear back, who do you contact if something’s missing, and what’s the best way to follow up. Write the answers down, so you’re not relying on memory later and you know when it’s fair to start chasing.

The bit that matters most

You are not being difficult by needing support to get through a planning meeting. The evidence backs that up. Most people find these meetings hard, and that’s a structural problem, not a personal one.

Preparation won’t fix everything about a system that’s genuinely tough to navigate. But it does shift some of the power back to you. Writing your own goals down first, bringing someone, having your evidence ready, and knowing you’re allowed to slow the meeting down. Those are small things you’re in control of, in a process where a lot doesn’t feel like it’s in your control at all.

You know your own life better than anyone sitting across the table from you. Your job in that meeting isn’t to perform your disability convincingly. It’s to describe your life accurately, and to have the support around you to do that without running out of steam halfway through.

Madeleine x