What to Say in Your NDIS Support Needs Assessment

Tips for participants and carers

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only. The guidance here is designed to help you communicate your genuine support needs clearly and specifically. It does not constitute professional disability support advice, and it is not a guide to misrepresenting your situation — accurate, honest descriptions are both the legal requirement and the most effective approach.

The I-CAN v6 assessment is a 60-to-90-minute conversation that will shape your NDIS funding for the next plan period. Your assessor is an accredited professional working through 12 defined domains — and within that structured framework, the specific words you choose, the examples you give, and the way you frame your challenges will directly influence how your support needs are rated.

Most participants underperform in their assessments — not because their needs aren't real, but because describing disability in clear, functional terms is genuinely difficult. People are conditioned to minimise, to cope, to present their best face. That instinct — which serves us well in most social situations — actively works against us in an assessment context.

This guide gives you specific, practical guidance on what to say, how to say it, and what to avoid. It applies whether you are preparing for your first I-CAN v6 assessment or approaching a plan review under the new framework.

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Why What You Say — and How You Say It — Matters

The I-CAN v6 assessment is a functional rating tool. Your assessor is working through each of the 12 domains and forming a judgement about the level of support you need in that area. That judgement is based on three things: what you tell them, what they observe, and your supporting documentation.

In practice, the conversation carries the most weight. Your assessor has limited time to understand a lifetime of lived experience. The observations they can make in a structured session are necessarily limited. Your documentation provides context — but it is your verbal description, your specific examples, and your honest account of your daily challenges that brings each domain to life.

This means that two participants with identical functional needs can receive different ratings depending on how clearly and specifically they describe their situation. One participant who says "I sometimes struggle with cooking" and another who says "I cannot safely use the stove without supervision — I have left the gas on unattended three times in the past month" are presenting fundamentally different pictures to an assessor, even if their underlying needs are the same.

The goal of this guide is to help you present an accurate picture — not a minimised one.

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The Most Important Rule: Describe Your Typical Difficult Day

The single most common mistake participants make in NDIS assessments is describing their best or most manageable days as representative of their typical experience.

This is called the "good day effect" — and it is almost universal. When asked "how do you go with showering?", most people instinctively think of the times when it went reasonably well. When asked "can you prepare your own meals?", people often think of a simple snack they managed rather than the day they could not get out of bed.

The I-CAN v6 assessment is not asking about your best days. It is not asking what you can do if conditions are perfect, you have rested well, and nothing has gone wrong. It is asking about your typical experience — and for many participants with disability, the typical experience includes many difficult days.

What "typical" actually means:

• How do things go for you on a regular week — not on a holiday, not on your best day of the month?
• How often do the difficult days occur? How do they compare in frequency to the better days?
• On a difficult day, what cannot you do at all? What requires help? What takes significantly longer than it would for someone without your disability?

How to apply this in practice:

When you answer a question during the assessment, first ask yourself: Am I describing my best day or my typical one? If you have given an answer that reflects how things went last Tuesday — when everything aligned — revisit it with an honest account of how things usually go.

If you have a fluctuating condition: Describe the full pattern. Tell the assessor that your functioning varies, explain how often you experience your worse periods, and give a specific recent example of what those days look like. Do not let the assessor draw conclusions based only on how you present during the assessment session itself.

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Structure Every Answer Around Impact, Not Diagnosis

There is a fundamental difference between a diagnostic statement and a functional impact statement — and the I-CAN v6 is designed to measure the latter.

A diagnostic statement sounds like: "I have multiple sclerosis."

A functional impact statement sounds like: "My MS means that on most days I cannot walk more than 15 metres without stopping to rest, I cannot carry anything while walking, and I require physical assistance to transfer from my wheelchair to the shower chair."

Your assessor already has access to your diagnosis — they can read it in your supporting reports. What they need from you is the functional translation: how does your condition affect your actual daily life, in each of the 12 domains?

The functional framing formula:

"[Condition/symptom] means I cannot [specific task] without [specific support/time/consequence], and this happens [frequency]."

Examples:

• "My cognitive fatigue means I cannot complete more than one cognitively demanding task per day. After a phone call, I need to rest for at least two hours before I can attempt anything else."
• "My anxiety disorder means I am unable to leave the house without a support person present. I have not attended any appointment unaccompanied in the past 14 months."
• "My fine motor difficulties mean I cannot button clothing, use a standard tap, or manage cutlery safely. These tasks require either adapted equipment or direct physical assistance every day."

Notice the specificity: a named functional impact, a concrete example, a timeframe or frequency, and a consequence. This is the level of detail that allows an assessor to make an accurate rating.

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What to Say About Fatigue and Energy Limits

Fatigue is the most consistently underreported factor in NDIS assessments — and one of the most important. Many participants with chronic illness, acquired brain injury, neurological conditions, or complex disability experience fatigue that fundamentally limits what they can do and when. Yet fatigue is invisible, easy to minimise, and rarely captured well in clinical reports.

The key is to translate fatigue into functional terms. Instead of saying "I get tired," describe what fatigue actually prevents you from doing and when:

• "After showering — which takes approximately 45 minutes with support — I need to rest for 2–3 hours before I can attempt any other activity."
• "I can sustain concentration for approximately 25 minutes before I lose comprehension entirely. After that point, I cannot safely make decisions or process new information."
• "If I exert physically in the morning, I am bedbound by early afternoon and cannot engage in any activity for the rest of the day. This happens on 4–5 days per week."

Be specific about the recovery period. Not just "I get tired and need to rest" but "I am non-functional for X hours after Y activity." This transforms fatigue from a vague complaint into a quantifiable functional limitation.

Be specific about the cumulative effect. Many participants find that their capacity degrades across the week — Monday may be manageable; by Friday the same tasks become impossible. If this is your experience, describe it. The assessor needs to understand your full weekly pattern, not just a single-session snapshot.

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What to Say About Mental Health Impacts

Mental health is one of the most challenging areas to describe in an assessment — and one of the most commonly understated. Social stigma, the instinct to appear capable, and the difficulty of quantifying emotional experience all conspire to produce descriptions that don't reflect the genuine functional impact of anxiety, depression, PTSD, psychosis, or emotional dysregulation.

The key is the same as for every other domain: translate mental health impacts into functional consequences.

Do not say: "I get anxious sometimes."

Do say: "Anxiety prevents me from making phone calls independently — even to services I contact regularly. I have not made an unassisted phone call in over a year. All calls require a support person to either make the call on my behalf or sit with me through it."

Do not say: "I have depression and it affects my motivation."

Do say: "On my worst days — which occur approximately 10–12 days per month — I am unable to leave my bed, shower, or eat a full meal. On those days, I require someone to physically prompt each task and prepare food for me. Without that support, those tasks do not happen."

Address the invisible functional impacts specifically:

• Difficulty making decisions or planning (executive function)
• Inability to initiate tasks without external prompting (motivation/activation)
• Difficulty sustaining attention through tasks
• Need for predictability and advance warning of changes
• Emotional dysregulation that affects interactions with others
• Impact on sleep and its downstream effects on daily functioning

Don't let stigma lead you to minimise. Mental health impacts on daily functioning are legitimate support needs within the NDIS framework. Describing them accurately is not weakness — it is giving the assessor the information they need to rate your domain accurately.

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What to Say About Supervision and Safety Needs

Supervision needs are one of the most significant drivers of funding in an NDIS plan — and also one of the most commonly underdescribed.

There are two distinct types of supervision need, and it is worth distinguishing between them clearly:

Physical supervision — presence to prevent physical harm, manage emergencies, or assist with physical tasks in real time.

Cognitive or behavioural supervision — presence to prompt, redirect, monitor for risk, manage behavioural escalation, or make decisions the participant cannot safely make independently.

Both matter, but cognitive/behavioural supervision is often invisible and difficult to articulate. Here is how to describe it:

• "Without someone present, I make unsafe decisions — including leaving the house without appropriate clothing in winter, using appliances unsafely, and answering the door to strangers. I require active supervision during all waking hours."
• "I require someone to monitor my emotional state throughout the day and provide de-escalation support before I reach crisis point. Without this, I have had four hospitalisation episodes in the past year."
• "I cannot be left alone with my children because I am not able to respond appropriately in an emergency due to processing delays."

Describe the consequence of absence — not just the presence of need. The assessor needs to understand what happens when supervision is not available. Concrete past examples (hospitalisations, near-misses, incidents) are powerful evidence.

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Before and After: Language Examples

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Phrases That Weaken Your Assessment — and Why

Certain phrases appear frequently in NDIS assessments — and they consistently undermine the participant's case. Learn to recognise them in your own speech and replace them with specific, functional descriptions.

"I try to manage." This tells the assessor you are coping. The system interprets "managing" as not needing support. Replace with: "I attempt [task] but it takes [X times longer / causes significant pain / requires multiple attempts] and often results in [consequence]."

"On a good day I can..." This gives the assessor your best-case scenario as a data point. They may use it to conclude that you are capable. Replace with: "On my typical days — which are not my best days — I cannot..."

"I don't like to ask for help." This frames your unmet need as a personal preference rather than a genuine gap in support. The assessor hears that support is available if you wanted it. Replace with: "I currently do not receive support for [task], which means [consequence]."

"It depends." Vague. The assessor cannot rate "it depends." Always follow with specifics: "It depends — on a difficult day, which happens about [X] days per week, I cannot [do X]. On a better day, I can [do Y] with [this level of support]."

"Mostly I'm okay." Similar to "I try to manage." Replace with a clear account of when you are not okay, how frequently that occurs, and what it looks like.

"My partner/family helps me out." This is important context — but always follow it by explaining what would happen without that informal support. "My partner currently prepares all my meals. Without that support, I would not be able to eat safely, because [specific reason]."

"It's not that bad." Minimising language that the assessor will take at face value. If something genuinely affects your functioning, say so directly. Normalising your challenges doesn't serve you here.

"I used to be able to..." Past tense framing. The assessment is about your current functional needs. Anchor your descriptions in the present: "I am currently unable to..."

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What Carers Should Add

Carers and family members who attend the I-CAN v6 assessment can provide a different and highly valuable layer of evidence — the perspective of someone who observes the participant's daily functioning directly and consistently.

But there is an art to carer input that maximises its value without undermining the participant.

What carers can describe that participants often can't:

• The daily tasks they perform for or with the participant that the participant may not mention — or may not realise they rely upon
• The frequency, duration, and nature of the support they provide
• What the participant's difficult days actually look like from the outside
• Specific recent incidents or examples that illustrate support needs
• The physical, emotional, and practical toll of providing care — and whether it is sustainable

Frame carer input in functional terms, not emotional ones. "I provide approximately 5 hours of direct support each day, including personal care, meal preparation, transport to appointments, and overnight monitoring" is more useful to an assessor than "It's exhausting and I do everything for them."

Don't contradict the participant — add to them. If the participant has described a need, support it with your own observations. If they have missed something important, add it: "I'd also like to mention that [participant] currently needs..."

Describe what you cannot sustain. If there are aspects of the care you currently provide that are not viable long-term — due to your own health, work, age, or other responsibilities — say so. The assessor needs to understand not just what is currently happening, but what the participant genuinely needs in terms of funded support.

If the participant cannot self-report reliably — for example due to cognitive impairment, communication difficulties, or acquired brain injury — carer evidence becomes the primary voice in the assessment. In that case, prepare a detailed written account of the participant's daily support needs, domain by domain, and provide it to the assessor as supporting documentation.

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Prepare for Your I-CAN v6 Assessment with ICANReady

Knowing what to say is only half the challenge — having it organised, written down, and ready to refer to on the day is what turns preparation into a confident, complete assessment.

ICANReady is a document preparation tool built specifically for NDIS participants and carers preparing for the I-CAN v6 assessment. It guides you through all 12 I-CAN domains in plain language and generates a structured preparation document you can bring to your assessment — available at launch for AUD $29.

Join the ICANReady waitlist — it's free →

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Frequently Asked Questions

Should I be completely honest even if I worry it might affect my funding?

Yes — always. Understating your needs leads to underfunding, which means you won't receive the support you genuinely require and your quality of life suffers as a result. Overstating needs creates legal and ethical risk, and can lead to funding decisions that are later challenged or reversed. The system is designed to receive honest, specific, functional descriptions of your real challenges. Accurate and specific is always the right approach.

What if I don't know the NDIS or I-CAN terminology?

It doesn't matter at all. Describe your daily life in plain, ordinary language. Assessors are trained to map everyday descriptions to the I-CAN domains — you don't need to know that "prompting to initiate self-care tasks" sits within a particular domain. What matters is that your descriptions are specific and honest, not that they use clinical vocabulary.

Can I write my answers down and read them in the assessment?

Yes — and it is highly recommended. Bringing notes, a preparation document, or a written summary to your assessment reduces anxiety, ensures you don't forget important points under pressure, and helps you stay consistent if questions cover the same ground from different angles. You are fully entitled to refer to written notes. If you prefer, you can also give a written summary directly to the assessor as supporting documentation.

What if the assessor asks leading or closed questions?

You can always expand beyond what the question strictly asks. If a question is too narrow or doesn't capture the full picture of your needs, say "I'd also like to mention..." or "There's something else relevant here..." You are allowed — and encouraged — to volunteer information that you believe is important, even if the assessor hasn't specifically asked for it. You can also ask the assessor to revisit a domain if you feel you didn't cover it fully earlier in the session.

What do I say if I have a fluctuating or episodic condition?

Describe your worst or most typical difficult days — not your best days. Explain the frequency and pattern of your condition: how often the difficult days occur, what triggers them, how long they last, and what you cannot do during those periods. Give specific recent examples. Most importantly, be explicit with the assessor: "My condition fluctuates significantly. Today may not be a representative day." Assessors are trained to understand episodic disability, and your funding should reflect your needs across the full range of your experience — not just how you present in a 90-minute session.

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Sources: NDIS website — Support needs assessment, NDIA — Preparing for your assessment, Disability Advocacy Network Australia, Australian Institute of Health and Welfare — People with disability in Australia