The National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) is an important part of the Australian disability landscape and one of the systems through which Occupational Therapists commonly encounter assistance animals.

For many OTs, their first involvement with an assistance-animal team occurs because a participant requires professional evidence for the NDIS.

In current practice, WAFA frequently encounters situations where a person already has a partly or fully trained assistance animal before an Occupational Therapist becomes involved. The person may then seek an OT primarily because they require assessment or documentation to apply for NDIS funding for matters such as training, assessment or ongoing maintenance.

The request may effectively become:

“I already have the assistance animal. I just need an OT to complete the NDIS paperwork.”

WAFA is working to change this approach.

An assistance animal is a significant and long-term intervention involving the person, their environment, substantial resources and the welfare of another living being. Ideally, Occupational Therapy involvement should begin before the person and animal have progressed substantially through the assistance-animal pathway.

An assistance animal should generally be considered following appropriate assessment and exploration of the person’s needs and other reasonable intervention options, rather than becoming the predetermined intervention that an OT is subsequently asked to justify.

You might think of this similarly to a major bathroom renovation. An OT would not ordinarily begin with:

“The participant wants a complete bathroom renovation, so how do I fill out the paperwork?”

The practitioner would first assess the person’s occupational needs, function, environment, existing supports, alternatives and expected outcomes before determining whether a major modification was appropriate.

Assistance-animal assessment should involve the same professional discipline.

This concept is explored extensively later in AAOT. At this foundation stage, we simply want you to understand why NDIS knowledge matters.

Understanding the System Around the Person

An AAOT working with NDIS participants needs a foundational understanding of the system within which participants are making decisions and seeking supports.

This includes understanding concepts such as:

• participant rights;
• choice and control;
• dignity and autonomy;
• informed decision-making;
• reasonable and necessary supports;
• disability-related support needs;
• participant goals;
• evidence-informed recommendations;
• safeguarding;
• privacy;
• conflicts of interest;
• complaints and participant protections; and
• professional responsibilities when working within the NDIS.

The NDIS Worker Orientation and related learning also provides broader context about the rights of people with disability and the responsibilities of people providing disability-related services.

These principles extend well beyond assistance-animal funding applications.

An NDIS Form Is Not an Occupational Therapy Assessment

One principle is worth introducing now because you will return to it repeatedly throughout AAOT:

The form records professional reasoning. The form does not replace professional reasoning.

Completing whatever NDIS paperwork has been requested should never be the only thing an Occupational Therapist does when becoming involved with an assistance-animal case.

Nor should completing the form automatically be the first task.

Before asking:

How do I justify this assistance animal to the NDIS?

the OT needs to understand:

What does this person actually need?

This requires consideration of the person’s occupations, goals, functional needs, environment, existing supports, barriers and possible interventions.

Sometimes an assistance animal will be an appropriate recommendation.

Sometimes further assessment will be required.

Sometimes another intervention may be more appropriate.

The fact that an animal has already been purchased, trained or used does not remove the OT’s responsibility to exercise independent professional judgement.

We will explore how to undertake this assessment, evaluate alternative interventions, work with trainers and veterinarians, consider animal welfare, evaluate functional outcomes, manage conflicts of interest and prepare appropriate NDIS evidence in detail later in AAOT.

For now, we want you to recognise why understanding the NDIS and the rights of its participants is an important foundation for that later work.

Choice and Control Does Not Remove Professional Responsibility

The NDIS places significant emphasis upon participant choice and control.

This connects directly with the human-rights and supported decision-making principles you have already explored.

However, respecting choice does not mean that an Occupational Therapist must endorse every requested intervention.

Similarly, professional expertise does not give the practitioner the right to take over the person’s decisions.

Good AAOT practice requires both:

Respect the person’s autonomy and preferences.

and

Provide independent, evidence-informed professional advice.

This relationship between participant rights, professional responsibility and assistance-animal assessment will be an important recurring theme throughout the credential.

The NDIS Is Only One Part of Assistance-Animal Practice

It is also important to recognise that NDIS funding requirements do not define assistance-animal practice in Australia.

NDIS funding, assistance-animal legal status, public-access rights, state and territory requirements, animal-management obligations and professional recommendations are related but distinct matters.

An animal may have relevance under one legal or professional framework without necessarily satisfying the requirements of another.

These distinctions are explored later in AAOT.

At this stage, your task is simply to develop sufficient familiarity with the NDIS to understand the environment in which many of your future clients may be navigating disability supports.

Continue This Topic in Your Reflective Workbook

You have now completed the foundation material for:

Topic 5 — NDIS Worker Orientation and Participant Rights

Please complete the recommended NDIS Worker Orientation and New Worker Induction learning identified in your AAOT Foundation Learning requirements.

Then refer to the corresponding section of your AAOT Foundation Learning Reflective Workbook.

The workbook will help you begin connecting NDIS principles to assistance-animal practice, particularly:

• participant rights;
• choice and control;
• safeguarding;
• professional independence;
• conflicts of interest; and
• the difference between undertaking an OT assessment and simply completing requested NDIS paperwork.

Do not worry about mastering the detailed NDIS assistance-animal assessment and funding process at this stage.

That material is taught in depth later in the AAOT Credential.

For now, we want you to understand the NDIS environment, the rights of participants within it, and why these principles matter to ethical assistance-animal practice.

Once you have completed or commenced the corresponding workbook activities, continue to Topic 6 — First Nations Cultural Awareness.