NDIS I-CAN v6 and Intellectual Disability

A guide for participants, families, carers, and supporters

Disclaimer: This article reflects publicly available information about the NDIS I-CAN v6 assessment framework as at June 2026. It does not constitute professional disability support, medical, or legal advice. For personalised guidance, contact the NDIA on 1800 800 110, your Support Coordinator, or a disability advocacy organisation.

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People with intellectual disability are among the NDIS participants with the most significant, long-term, and complex support needs. Many require support across every aspect of daily life — personal care, communication, learning, community participation, home management, and more — and that support is not a temporary measure. It is a permanent and fundamental part of how these individuals live.

The I-CAN v6 assessment is designed to capture this complexity. Done well, it produces a plan that genuinely reflects what a person needs to live with dignity, safety, and as much autonomy as possible. Done poorly — without adequate preparation, without supporter input, and without a clear picture of the person's typical functioning across all domains — it can significantly underestimate needs.

This guide is for the people who know the participant best, and who play the most important role in ensuring the assessment is accurate.

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What Intellectual Disability Means in the I-CAN v6 Framework

The I-CAN v6 does not assess intellectual disability as a category. It assesses functional support needs across 12 life domains.

For people with intellectual disability, this means the assessment is asking: what level of support does this person actually need — across self-care, daily activities, communication, mobility, relationships, learning, employment, health, social participation, home life, behaviour, and service coordination — to function in daily life?

The answer for many people with intellectual disability is: consistent, skilled, ongoing support across most or all domains. That is a legitimate and important finding, and the assessment should reflect it.

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The Role of Supporters in Making the Assessment Accurate

For participants with significant intellectual disability, the most important preparation you can do is ensure that supporter observations are formally included in the assessment process.

A person with moderate to severe intellectual disability may not be able to self-report their support needs comprehensively in a structured assessment conversation. They may present their best performance in a formal setting. The assessor — meeting the person for the first time in a 90-minute session — may not see the full picture of daily life without deliberate input from people who do.

This is where you come in.

As a family member, carer, or close supporter, you have observations that are irreplaceable. You see the full range of daily functioning — the good days and the difficult ones, the tasks that look simple but take an hour with extensive support, the community outings that are only possible because of the specific skills of a familiar support worker.

Document it. Bring it. Make sure it is part of the record.

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Domain-by-Domain Guidance

Self Care

What to document: The full picture of personal care support — bathing, dressing, grooming, toileting, medication management, eating. How much time does support take? What level of prompting, physical assistance, or supervision is required? What happens if support is not available?

Example: "Requires full physical assistance for showering, including shampoo and rinsing. Dressing requires step-by-step verbal prompting for each garment in sequence. Cannot manage buttons or laces independently. Requires supervision for all meals due to risk of choking."

General Tasks and Demands

What to document: Ability to manage daily routines consistently (many people with intellectual disability require a structured visual or verbal schedule to navigate the day); ability to manage medications reliably (prompting, supervision, or full assistance may be required); safety awareness and vulnerability to exploitation or abuse.

Example: "Cannot prepare any meal independently beyond opening a pre-packaged item. Requires a visual schedule to follow daily routine and verbal prompting to transition between activities. Cannot be left alone for extended periods without supervision due to safety awareness difficulties and vulnerability to being taken advantage of by others."

Communication

Intellectual disability often involves significant communication differences — ranging from limited verbal language to good verbal ability in familiar settings but difficulty with complex, abstract, or novel communication.

What to document:

• Expressive language ability (what the person can communicate, and how)
• Receptive language ability (what the person understands)
• Use of AAC, Makaton, PECS, or other communication supports
• The gap between communication in a familiar one-on-one setting and communication in unfamiliar or high-demand situations
• Literacy level and ability to manage written communication

Mobility

What to document: Any physical mobility limitations (common in some syndromes associated with intellectual disability), need for supervision when moving in the community, or inability to navigate independently.

Interpersonal Interactions & Relationships

What to document: The level of support required to manage social relationships safely — including vulnerability to exploitation, difficulty recognising unsafe relationships, and challenges understanding social rules and expectations.

Important: Many people with intellectual disability are significantly vulnerable to abuse, exploitation, and harm in social settings. This vulnerability is a legitimate support need, and the assessment should reflect it.

Learning & Applying Knowledge

What to document: Educational history; current learning capacity; supported learning arrangements; any formal educational placements and the level of support required within them.

Life Long Learning

What to document: Vocational aspirations and what barriers intellectual disability creates to pursuing them; capacity for supported employment or voluntary work; what type and level of support would enable the person to participate in meaningful work or skill-building activities; history of supported employment if applicable.

Example: "Has expressed a goal of working in a café environment. Has attended a supported employment programme for 18 months but requires ongoing job coaching, task simplification, and consistent supervision to maintain work routines. Without structured support, cannot sustain workplace demands independently."

Mental & Emotional Health

People with intellectual disability experience mental health conditions at significantly higher rates than the general population — including anxiety, depression, and psychosocial disability. These conditions are often missed or misattributed to intellectual disability itself (diagnostic overshadowing).

What to document: Any diagnosed or suspected mental health conditions; how emotional or psychological difficulties present in daily life (which may look different from typical presentations); current mental health treatment and whether it is accessible and appropriate for someone with intellectual disability; whether mental health difficulties affect safety or daily functioning.

Example: "Has become increasingly anxious and withdrawn over the past year. Does not have a formal mental health diagnosis but behaviour observations suggest significant anxiety. Cries and refuses to engage in activities they previously enjoyed. Has access to a psychologist but communication barriers make standard therapy difficult."

Community, Social & Civic Life

What to document: Actual current participation in community activities; what participation requires in terms of direct support; what participation is prevented by lack of adequate support.

Example: "Cannot access any community activity independently. All community participation requires a 1:1 support worker. Without this support, community participation is zero. With funded 1:1 support, can participate in a weekly swimming group and supported social group."

Domestic Life

What to document: Ability to shop for food and household items (many people with intellectual disability cannot manage independent shopping due to financial management, decision-making, or safety challenges in the community); ability to prepare meals safely; ability to manage cleaning and laundry with or without prompting; what level of assistance is required for each domestic task.

Example: "Cannot shop independently — does not understand how to use money or manage a shopping list without direct support. Meal preparation is limited to using a microwave with supervision. Requires step-by-step instruction for all cleaning tasks and cannot sequence laundry tasks independently."

Behaviours of Concern

What to document: Any behaviours of concern — frequency, severity, context, and current management strategies. If a Behaviour Support Plan (BSP) is in place, reference it and describe what it involves.

Behaviours of concern in intellectual disability often reflect unmet communication needs or environmental factors. The assessment should reflect both the behaviour and its context.

Physical Health

People with intellectual disability have significantly higher rates of physical health conditions than the general population — including epilepsy, vision and hearing impairment, gastrointestinal conditions, metabolic conditions, and others. Managing these conditions is complicated by communication differences and the cognitive demands of health system navigation.

What to document: Physical health conditions present; how they affect daily functioning; what health management support is required (medication management, specialist appointments, monitoring); whether the person can communicate health symptoms accurately; what additional support is needed to access health care effectively.

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Supported Decision-Making in the Assessment Process

People with intellectual disability have the right to make decisions about their own lives — including decisions about their NDIS plan and the assessment process. This right does not disappear because someone needs support to exercise it.

Supported decision-making means that a trusted person helps the participant understand the assessment process, the questions being asked, and the options available — and then helps them communicate their own views and preferences, rather than making decisions on their behalf.

The I-CAN v6 assessment should respect and accommodate supported decision-making. If the participant has a preferred way of being supported to make decisions, communicate this to the NDIA and the assessor in advance.

If you are a guardian or an appointed decision-maker, ensure the assessor understands your role and the limits of any legal appointment.

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Common Mistakes Families Make — and How to Avoid Them

Understating support needs because the person "manages" in some settings

People with intellectual disability often perform better in familiar, structured, supported settings than in the rest of their daily life. A participant who appears to manage at a day programme may need significant support at home that the programme setting doesn't reveal. Describe the full picture across all settings, not only the best-case presentation.

Describing what would be possible with intensive coaching rather than current reality

There is a difference between "with two years of intensive training, they could potentially learn to cook simple meals" and "they currently require full preparation assistance for all meals." The I-CAN v6 assesses current support needs, not aspirational capacity. Describe what is needed now.

Leaving out behaviours of concern because they feel shameful

Behaviours of concern — including self-injury, aggression, property destruction, or elopement — are legitimate support needs that the assessment must capture. Families sometimes omit or minimise these out of a desire to protect privacy or avoid stigma. But without documenting behaviours and their impact, the plan cannot fund the skilled support needed to manage them safely.

Assuming the assessor will "figure it out" from the diagnosis

"They have moderate intellectual disability" is not sufficient preparation. The assessor needs to know specifically how the disability affects each area of daily life. Two people with the same diagnostic label may have very different functional profiles. Specific, functional description is what drives the assessment, not the diagnosis.

Forgetting to describe what happens without support

Many supporter statements describe what the participant does with support. Equally important is what happens without it — what deteriorates, what becomes unsafe, what the consequences are. This "without support" picture is often the most powerful part of a preparation document.

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Preparing Your Written Contribution

As a supporter, your most valuable contribution is a written document covering all 12 domains from a daily-life observer's perspective. This does not need to be clinically formatted — plain, specific, honest descriptions of what you see every day are exactly what is needed.

Focus on:

• What the participant can do independently, reliably, and safely
• What they can do with prompting, supervision, or physical assistance
• What they cannot do at all without full support
• What the consequences are when support is not available
• What a typical day looks like across morning, afternoon, and evening

The more specific and concrete your descriptions, the more useful they are. "Needs help with showering" is less useful than "requires a support worker to be present for the entire shower, providing step-by-step verbal instruction and physical assistance with hair and back, taking approximately 35 minutes."

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Sources: NDIA — Support needs assessment framework, NDIS Amendment (Getting the NDIS Back on Track No. 1) Act 2024, Council for Intellectual Disability, Disability Advocacy Network Australia (DANA), United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities