Your NDIS funding is broken up into a range of budgets, each designed to assist you in different ways.
It’s important to know how these budgets work so that you can make the most of your NDIS plan funding.
What is the NDIS consumables budget?
The NDIS consumables budget falls under the larger Core Supports budget.
The Core Supports budget is one of the three NDIS funding categories. It’s there to help people with a disability with their everyday activities, disability-related needs and to help work towards their NDIS plan goals.
The Core Supports budget contains the following four categories:
- Assistance with Daily Life
- Consumables
- Assistance with Social and Community Participation
- Transport.
What can I use my NDIS consumables budget for?
The NDIS consumables budget is allocated to spend on reasonable and necessary consumables up to the cost of $1,500.
What are consumables?
Consumables are the everyday items required to manage personal disability-related needs. These products are low risk and low-cost.
Examples of consumables:
- Gloves
- Hand sanitiser
- Face masks
- Continence products
- Wipes
- Disability-related wound Care
- Cleaning supplies
- Modified eating aids
- Food preparation products
- Catheters
- Specialised food supplements
- Vision or hearing-related low cost assistive technology
- Chair and bed protectors
- Auslan or signed English training
- Telephone or video interpreting
- Compression stockings.
How does the consumables budget work?
The consumables budget is flexible, so you can choose how you spend it, provided what you purchase is reasonable and necessary, and is specifically related to your support needs.
For example, you cannot use your consumables budget to purchase continence products if continence issues are not related to your disability.
You can also not use your consumables budget on general groceries, prescription medications and cosmetics.
Where can I use my consumables budget?
Consumables can be purchased from both registered and unregistered merchants. These merchants can be supermarkets, pharmacies, or specialised online stores, such as Mable Direct.
Note if you are NDIA managed, then the provider must be registered.
What is Mable Direct?
Mable Direct is an e-commerce site where, if you’re a plan-managed through a plan manager such as Leap in!, or a self-managed NDIS participant, you have options to purchase consumables related to your support needs, and ship them direct to your home, if those consumables are covered in your plan
There is a wide range of affordable NDIS consumables to shop online, including:
- PPE including masks, gloves and sanitiser
- Household cleaning items
- Continence support products
- Skin care and protection
- Wound care
- Value packs containing a mix of products
There are options to use your NDIS funding on consumables purchased on Mable Direct, provided they align with your support needs.
You can learn more about the NDIS in our NDIS Topic Library.
To browse Mable Direct, or to make your first purchase, visit www.mabledirect.com.au.