NDIS provider in Boronia.

No, and it is worth being precise about why, because a good number of people reach this page searching for exactly that. Counselling and psychology are clinical therapies. They are usually funded under the capacity-building part of a plan and delivered by a registered psychologist or counsellor, and we are a disability support provider rather than a clinical service. What we do provide is mental health support: the practical and relational side of living well with a condition, which works beside your clinicians and never instead of them. If a counsellor is what you actually need, a coordinator can help you find one, and we take nothing for the referral.

Yes, and the honest answer comes in two halves. The arranged side of support — coordination, chasing reports, sorting service agreements, working out what your funding covers — is done by phone and email and is identical wherever it is run from. The attended side, where somebody comes to your door, depends entirely on whether we have a worker rostered near you. So the question worth putting to any provider is not where their desks are but who they have working in your street, and we will answer that specifically rather than in general terms.

It does the comparing. In most of Melbourne coordination is largely about finding anybody with capacity; at this end of the east the constraint is the opposite, and the skill is knowing which of the available therapists, day programmes and support providers are worth your funding and which look better on a website than in practice. That means having rung them, knowing their waiting times, and being willing to say that one of them is not a good fit for you.

Boronia, Ringwood, Box Hill, Camberwell, Hawthorn and Malvern — the eastern localities our coverage is already on the record for, listed from this end back in toward the city. That is not a radius drawn on a map, and nobody works all six in one run. If your street is somewhere else in the east, or further out past the foothills, tell us and we will give you a straight answer about what we could keep going there rather than a reflexive yes.

Often, yes, and the sequence matters more than people expect. A modification has to be justified by an occupational therapist before the funding will follow, so the first job is arranging that assessment rather than getting quotes. From there it depends on what you are working with: a step at the entrance and a bathroom to reconfigure is ordinary work, whereas a full structural change in a rental needs the owner on board before anybody draws anything. We will tell you early which of those you are in.

No. Plan management is its own role under the NDIS, with its own funding line, and we are a registered support provider instead. It comes up here often enough to be worth answering plainly, because the two get conflated and people sometimes discover months in that nobody is doing the part they assumed was covered. A coordinator can help you choose a plan manager, and we take nothing for pointing you at one.

Coordination can usually begin quickly, because it does not wait on a roster. Support at your door takes as long as it takes to match you with someone who lives near enough to be reliable about it — sometimes quick, sometimes not, and we will tell you which before you sign anything. If a discharge date or a plan end date is bearing down on you, say so first, because it changes the order we do things in.