So .... I now have the date for my plan review meeting in about 3 weeks. On the one hand it's good to know it will happen before my current plan expires. On the other hand it's not very long to gather necessary reports which have to be submitted to them in advance of the meeting. Plus I'm nervous about it being with a new NDIS representative that hasn't worked on my previous plan and probably hasn't seen all the information submitted for my eventual acceptance to the scheme almost a year ago. Actually I'm just nervous about it generally, very. I have collected various resources to help prepare for the review and it's time for me to look at them all now.
I have a 9 page document to do for my coordinator of supports before this Thursday. Luckily bro and sil have agreed to go through it with me before then. I'm so eternally grateful for their support with all this stuff. They have a lot of other big things going on in their lives right now.
My CoS has been rather slack the last 2+ months. I received an apology from her boss and the CoS told me they've 'red flagged' my case lately because of that. I've raved elsewhere and could again here. One of the things that happened is that one of my supports stopped coming and wasn't replaced for 8 weeks. etc etc. The CoS seems to be stepping up her support of me but I just don't feel I can really rely on her. She repeatedly told me she would do things and didn't do them when she said she would, went on leave without telling me, seemed to have a breakdown of communication with my support workers' team leader ...... so I feel I need to be strategic with her and not do an official complaint as I need her on board for my review. Don't want to have to start with someone new this close to it. But I may well request a new CoS after my new plan is in place.
I need to go through my goals and steps towards them, what has and hasn't worked, progress made and hinderances, new goals for the new plan and lots more as well as gather reports from psychologist, plan manager and case workers from support organizations. One of them did a case management plan recently that they want to submit for the review and it has a whole lot of stuff in it that's just not relevant to where I'm at (re looking for housing, applying for employment and even community engagement for aboriginal identifying people - which I am not). So that has to be done again by a guy who showed this week that he can't even remember what I said in a phone call from the day before, and rings my support worker instead of just ringing me. It's just this sort of complication that means I have little faith in the people up the line from my actual support workers (who are great).
I still have to say that the end result of being accepted to the scheme last year was a very good outcome for me - $55 000 of funds in total - so I'm doing my best to stay hopeful for the outcome this year and tell myself it's worth the effort. So many hoops to jump through, even tho' NDIS website says that once you are accepted it's for life. One of the tricky parts is in the proving that what you are asking for is 'reasonable and necessary'. And remembering all the NDIS-specific language to use.
Wish me luck!
@greenpea @CheerBear @Queenie @saturnzoon @Appleblossom and anyone else following.
