Explore the eight domains of your life for life-changing NDIS goal setting: A brainstorming tool.
Image Description: Light pink, yellow and orange post-it notes on a grey felt pin board. The first two pink post-its, in the top left of the image, are in focus and the board fades out of focus to the right.
The NDIS exists with the premise that “anyone can make, work toward and achieve goals in their lifetime; regardless of their abilities or situation.” Goals give great insight into a person’s passions, what interests them and what they’d like to contribute to the world.
NDIS funding is there to bridge the identified gap between a person living with disability and their capacity to achieve their life’s goals. A person can also be supported through informal supports like family, friends and by mainstream or other community services.
A dream written down with a date becomes a goal
Goals can be as fundamental as becoming more or maintaining independence, learning new things, through to more complex relationship building and supporting people to remain in their jobs and volunteer positions.
It also doesn’t have to be a solo mission. To create goals, get input from all the important people in the participant’s life - family, support workers, friends, allied health professionals, anyone that can bring a holistic view to realising unmet needs.
It’s an ambitious undertaking - with goals being as wide and varied as the hundreds of thousands of participants - and simply stating “I want my life to be better,” while it might be true, isn’t helpful in identifying the areas of life that need support.
The Eight Domains of Life
A brainstorming tool that can be helpful in uncovering unmet needs and desires is exploring The Eight Domains of Life. They are:
Personal choice and control
Lifelong learning
Daily living
Relationships
Health and wellbeing
Work
Social and community participation, and
Home.
Personal choice and control
One of the fundamental principles of the NDIS is Choice and Control; ensuring that people living with disability have autonomy over their life’s decisions and its direction. This domain includes making decisions, managing supports and any big, life-improving choices and changes.
Question:
Do you feel like your choices are honoured? Do you feel in control of the decisions that shape your life?
Lifelong learning
While actual education delivery and provision for those costs (like enrolment fees) are outside of NDIS scope, having access to and being able to participate in lifelong learning, whether it’s post-school options, further education and improved learning circumstances, is made possible through NDIS support.
Question:
Would you like to learn more about a particular subject? Would you like to undertake education or training related to self-improvement or to boost your work skills? What, if anything, makes these scenarios challenging?
Daily living
As part of living a full, independent life, being able to manage daily living tasks such as personal care, household tasks, getting from A to B and figuring out how to balance your spending can all fall under Daily Living goals.
Question:
Do you feel that you are able to manage your daily living tasks to a level you are happy with? What, if anything, makes this challenging?
Relationships
Relationships are arguably the cornerstone of a person’s sense of purpose and place in the world. Having people who are genuinely interested in engaging with participants, either as a friend, colleague, educator or support worker can be instrumental in achieving a high level of life satisfaction. Having supports in place to assist in facilitating these relationships can be life-changing.
Question:
How do you feel about the relationships you currently have in your life? Could they be better? What could help with that?
What sort of relationships would you like to have in your life in your future? What could help make that possibility more real?
Health and wellbeing
Ultimately, the rest of your goals will become a lot more achievable if your health and wellbeing is made a priority through appropriate strength training at the gym, advice on cooking and food choices as well as regular assistance from allied health professionals to improve mobility and function.
Question:
How do you feel about your health? Could it be better? What could help with that?
Work
Having a job to go to, whether it’s a paid or volunteer role, is a great way to motivate yourself to get up and go in the morning. A job can also maintain or improve your quality of life through the development of a sense of purpose and maintaining relationships with colleagues.
Question:
Would you like to start/continue working in a paid/volunteer role? What makes that scenario challenging? What could help with that?
Social and Community Participation
Participating, in meaningful ways, in our community brings a sense of connectedness and citizenship. Whether that be through attending a headliner concert, borrowing books from the local library or participating in a special-interest group, being able to act upon our passions and interests outside of our inner circle boosts our sense of self and quality of life.
Question:
Would you like to participate in activities/events/meetings in your greater community? What makes that challenging?
Home
Home is the HQ, it’s our safe place, our haven. Having goals around being able to feel safe and able to fully utilise our homes facilities helps create a strong foundation from where we start each day. Even the choice of where we call home; living independently or with support, with our family or without, is a fundamental choice and can have goals centred around it.
Question:
Do you feel safe and independent in your home? Are you happy with your living arrangement? What could make you feel more safe and independent? What living arrangement would you like to have?
What next? Will new goals change my plan?
You can actually change your statement of goals and aspirations at any time, you just need to let the NDIA (your LAC/Planner) know. The NDIS will update your plan with your new statement of goals and aspirations and give you a copy of your varied plan within seven days of getting your changed statement.
Changing your goals is not the same as a plan review or a change of circumstance review but could result in a varied plan, which could change the way your funding could be applied to your circumstances.
Did you find this blog post helpful? Know anyone that would benefit from it? Please share with anyone that you think it could assist.
Having trouble wording your goals or matching supports to them?
Head to Kinora and post your questions or even your goals up in the chat, and our coaches can work with you to see which supports would qualify as reasonable and necessary and which ones potentially wouldn’t. Log into Kinora
Want some more inspiration?
We were inspired by the beautiful story of Louise Marson, shared to us by our friends at My Plan Manager. Enjoy the read. It's a great positive way to approach your NDIS journey. Read Louise's Story
Looking for new or different service providers to help you achieve plan goals?
Browse Kinora's new service provider marketplace. Log into Kinora and click the Service Categories menu at the top of the navigation. Browse Marketplace
Write goals to have greater SCOPE to maximise funding flexibility.
Most people lean on the SMART goals approach to write goals, but one of our Kinora Coaches suggests a different perspective with great practical tips so that you can get more from your NDIS budget. Tips for Setting Goals
