Hi guys,
I am wondering if anybody could shed some light. I would like to open up my own ndis hub in a small town. We do have two hubs here and they are very unreliable. I would love to offer a reliable service towards ndis clients and hopefully even seniors if that's something I can combine.
However I don't even know where to start. I have tried to ask Google and it basically says 'abn, yellow card, register your ndis provider business and off you go'. But is it really that simple?
I have already maintennace businesses engaged that can help our clients out with that part, but do I just open up a shop, and hire one or two carers, then try to find clients? God I want to do this but I feel like I need a mentor. Please enlighten me and please stay kind
7 Replies
If you don’t know where to start, please go get some training in the disability sector. Work for an agency.
There are a lot of laws you need to know in regards to who you are allowed to employ, restrictive practices, medications etc and how often a support worker is allowed to work with the one client for.
You need to know if you are registered/unregistered and you need to know which clients you are allowed to work with
Getting work experience and getting your certificates will help you avoid doing massive harm.
The best agencies we’ve worked with have experience, have strong guidelines and procedures in place but beware, it’s a 24/7 gig. Support workers work all hours of the day and night and stuff goes wrong, you will get phone calls!
An office/shop doesn’t make a good agency and most agencies do home visits, so it’s not a great use of precious start up funds.
My son gets NDIS and no, I absolutely don't think you should "just open one up".
People with disabilities are some of the most vulnerable in our community, so if you are passionate to do this, that's awesome, but they deserve professionals, so go and get some real-life experience.
Improper vetting or miss matching carers with clients can cause significant trauma.
It is a highly legislated area and incredibly important, it isn't like opening up a milk bar.
These are people remember, not fruit and vegetables or homewares.
Go get experience as a carer and also learn how the management of the business works and get some formal training, only then will you have the tools to offer your clients an excellent standard of care.
If you aren't willing to spend the time to do that, quite frankly you should bin the idea.
My son also gets NDIS & I agree 💯.
I have made a lot of assumptions based on your post.
If you do have experience/formal training and know how to manage it, apologies, please disregard what I said.
I say go for it, but make sure your eyes are open. Any business costs a lot to start up, and if there’s two in your town already that both don’t work well, then that’s a clue to you. Maybe the providers are hard to source where you are. Keep working on your idea until you have all the pieces.
They are probably unreliable due to lack of staff, so you're going to have the same problem if not worse because there will be less employees to spread around the three of you.
Yep, and what’s worse a person running it who is clueless about what’s involved.