Executive Summary
Between 2023 and 2025, the NDIS experienced moderate overall participant growth, alongside a much faster increase in demand for Support Coordination.
- Total NDIS participants grew from approximately 610,000 (June 2023) to 739,000 (June 2025), representing average growth of around 3–4% per year.
- Over the same period, the number of participants funded for Support Coordination increased at a faster rate, with year-on-year growth of approximately 8–9%, particularly across the 2024–25 financial year.
This means that while the NDIS is growing steadily, the need for Support Coordination is accelerating at more than twice the rate of participant growth, reflecting rising participant and system complexity rather than simple increases in participant numbers.
Support Coordination continues to be required by around 46% of all participants, while indicators such as plan changes, disputes, safeguarding incidents and high-risk cohorts continue to rise. Together, these trends point to a NDIS that is not stabilising through maturity alone but becoming more complex to manage at both participant and system levels.
As a result, the nature of Support Coordination work has shifted significantly, increasing the need for fit-for-purpose, Support Coordination-specific digital tools to support consistent, safe and sustainable practice.
Growth in Support Coordination Demand Outpacing Participant Growth
Over the most recent 12-month reporting period (FY2024-2025):
- Total NDIS participants increased by approximately 3–4%
- Participants funded for Support Coordination increased by approximately 8–9%
- The proportion of participants accessing Support Coordination remained broadly stable at around 46%
Although the proportion has remained relatively unchanged, this masks a substantial increase in absolute demand and a rise in the intensity of Support Coordination required per participant.
More people are entering the NDIS needing Support Coordination, and many participants are remaining in Support Coordination for longer periods
If the NDIS were becoming easier to navigate as systems matured, a decline in reliance on Support Coordination or shorter, lower-intensity Support Coordination episodes would be expected. Instead, the data shows growing volumes of specialist, crisis-responsive and highrisk Support Coordination work.
This confirms that Support Coordination is responding to rising system complexity, not driving it.
What is driving rising complexity in Support Coordination?
Recent growth cohorts within the NDIS are increasingly characterised by participants with multiple and intersecting needs rather than single, stable support requirements. These participants often require a wider mix of supports, delivered by multiple providers, and coordination required across different systems such as health, education, housing and justice.
As participant needs change or escalate, supports must be adjusted more frequently, increasing the number of plan variations, service changes and intensity of Support Coordination required.
For many of these cohorts, complexity is compounded by instability. Psychosocial disability, behavioural escalation, housing insecurity, hospital discharge and justice transitions all increase the risk of service disruption and safeguarding concerns. This means Support Coordination is not limited to initial setup, but involves ongoing monitoring, problem-solving and risk management to maintain continuity of supports.
These participants are also more likely to experience contested or unclear decisions, leading to higher rates of plan reviews, internal disputes and tribunal matters. Supporting participants through these processes requires sustained engagement, detailed evidence gathering and Support Coordination across multiple stakeholders.
Together, these factors mean that Support Coordination increasingly involves longer duration, higher intensity and higher risk work. Complexity is driven not only by participant needs, but by the interaction of changing circumstances, multiple service systems and increased accountability expectations, all of which significantly increase the workload per participant.
System and administrative complexity
Between late 2023 and September 2025, NDIA quarterly reporting shows that while total participant numbers have grown steadily, key indicators of system and administrative complexity have increased at a much faster rate, including:
- Plan reassessment and variation requests, which increased from approximately 34,000 per quarter in late 2023 to over 42,000 per quarter by September 2025 (an increase of approximately 25–30%).
- Internal reviews (Reviews of Reviewable Decisions – RoRDs), which increased from around 3.6% of participants in early 2024 to 6.1% of participants by September 2025 (an increase of approximately 70% in the rate of internal reviews)
- Administrative Review Tribunal (ART) cases, which increased from approximately 0.7% of participants in 2023 to 1.3% of participants by September 2025 (an increase of approximately 85–90%).
- Participant critical incidents, which increased from around 2.5% of participants in 2023 to 3.1% by September 2025 (an increase of approximately 24%), with overall complaint volumes also rising faster than participant growth over the same period.
These measures reflect management complexity rather than access complexity. Each increase translates directly into additional Support Coordination effort to maintain continuity of supports, manage risk, respond to disputes, and prevent escalation for participants with increasingly complex needs.
Market and workforce constraints
Service Provider shortages, workforce turnover and thin markets, particularly in regional, remote and high-risk service areas, have significantly changed the nature of Support Coordination. Suitable providers are often limited or unavailable, with long waitlists, restrictive intake criteria or limited capacity to support participants with complex needs.
As a result, Support Coordination increasingly involves complex provider search and negotiation, including repeated outreach, follow-up and assessment of provider suitability. Where services cannot be established or sustained, Support Coordinators must undertake contingency planning and service recovery, managing provider withdrawal, arranging interim supports and escalating risks to maintain participant safety and continuity of care
Service instability also leads to repeated plan changes when funded supports cannot be delivered as intended. Each change requires additional evidence, documentation and engagement with the NDIA, increasing administrative workload and delaying effective support.
Combined, these market conditions shift Support Coordination from straightforward linkage to ongoing problem-solving and risk management, significantly increasing workload and administrative burden for Support Coordinators.
Support Coordination Software: addressing rising complexity
As participant and system complexity within the NDIS has increased, the role of Support Coordinators has expanded significantly. Support Coordinators are now managing higher-risk participants, more frequent plan changes and disputes, and stronger expectations around evidence, safeguarding and defensible decision-making.
Additionally, the regulatory requirements of registered providers have grown since the inception of the Scheme, with the cost of compliance increasing significantly, in terms of direct audit fees, audit preparation and day to day governance activities – most of which are non-billable.
These demands have grown whilst funding for Support Coordination has remained static for six years, which has impacted on workforce capacity, increasing workload, administrative burden and risk for both providers and participants.
Generic CRMs and systems are not designed for this level of complexity. They typically focus on record keeping rather than guiding practice, capturing evidence or supporting risk-informed decision-making. As a result, Support Coordinators are often required to rely on individual judgement, manual processes and ad-hoc templates, leading to inconsistent practice and inefficiencies across teams.
Purpose-built Support Coordination Software directly addresses these challenges by embedding structured practice frameworks into everyday work. Guided workflows support consistent, person-centred practice, while in-built tools for documentation, person-centred planning, risk management and evidence capture reduce administrative effort and improve defensibility.
By standardising core Support Coordination activities and making compliance and evidence a by-product of practice rather than an additional task, the software enables Support Coordinators to manage complexity more effectively, improve consistency and focus more time on participants.
For Support Coordination providers, this delivers tangible value through improved productivity, stronger quality assurance, reduced compliance risk and better visibility across teams. As the complexity of Support Coordination continues to increase, access to fit-for-purpose digital tools is becoming essential to support workforce sustainability and high-quality outcomes.
If you would like to see how purpose-built Support Coordination Software can:
✓ Streamline your systems and reduce administrative burden
✓ Improve consistency and team-wide visibility
✓ Strengthen evidence and defensibility
✓ Support quality assurance and audit readiness
✓ Free up more time for participant-focused work
We invite you to attend a complimentary live demonstration.
See firsthand how purpose-built software can support your team to manage rising complexity with confidence, while evidencing high-quality, person-centered outcomes.
Register for a free demo today