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, and 34.71% called it very difficult. That’s most people, not a small unlucky group.

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 and your goals, often to someone you’ve never met, in under an hour. That’s a strange ask for anyone, and stranger still when you’re managing pain, fatigue or sensory overwhelm on top of it. The difficulty isn’t a sign you’re doing it wrong. It’s a sign the format is hard.

What actually helps before you walk in

The NDIS’s own guidance agrees: preparation and support both make a real difference.

Write your goals down first, in your own words, not NDIS language. You can translate it into planner speak together in the meeting.

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

Gather your evidence ahead of time, reports, letters from allied health, anything that backs up what you’re asking for. Sharing it before the meeting can speed the 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.

During the meeting itself

Keep a written list in front of you, it’s genuinely hard to remember everything under stress. If something feels rushed, say so, “can we slow down for a second” is a completely reasonable thing to say. Ask what happens next before you leave: when you’ll hear back, who to contact if something’s missing, and the best way to follow up. Write the answers down.

The bit that matters most

You are not being difficult by needing support to get through a planning meeting. 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 shifts some of the power back to you. 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, with the support around you to do that without running out of steam halfway through.

Madeleine x