Setting and achieving your goals is an important part of your NDIS Plan but it can be hard to know where to start. Deciding on what you want to achieve with your funded supports and how you’ll do it can be tricky, but if you break each goal down into smaller pieces, it’s easier than you think.
Remember, your goals are very personal and based on what’s important to you. If you’d like a refresher on what goals are and how to set them, check out our page Setting and achieving your NDIS goals.
This week we’re taking a look at employment goals and how you can use the different categories and supports in your NDIS funding to achieve them.
To help you, we’ll be using an NDIS participant called ‘Bob’ and some of his employment goals as an example.
“Hello, I’m Bob. I work at Endeavour Foundation Industries and I’m 45. I’ve worked here for 15 years, so a long time. I like my job and my friends. Some of my workmates are a bit annoying and I get angry and the bosses don’t like it. I’d like to try and learn something new.”
Bob’s goals include:
- Staying in his job
- Learning new things
- Learning strategies to get along better with his workmates.
Here are the steps that Bob took to achieve his goals:
1. Using Support Coordination from his Plan.
Bob really liked his packing job at Endeavour Foundation, but he was also keen to try something different. He spoke with his support coordinator about what his options were.
If you don’t have support coordination in your Plan, a member of the Leap in! Crew can also provide you with options and ideas.
2. Using Assistance in Specialised Supported Employment from the Finding and Keeping a Job category.
After talking through the options, Bob decided that because he loved his job and didn’t like a lot of change it was best to stay where he was and learn to do some new tasks at work. His support coordinator spoke to his supervisor about Bob’s goal to increase the variety in his role.
Bob and his supervisor John sat down and talked about the sorts of things that Bob might be able to learn or do differently. Bob had always been interested in driving the forklift but had been a bit nervous about it in the past as it seemed like too big a challenge. John encouraged him to give it a go.
You can read more about Supported Employment with the Endeavour Foundation.
3. Using Improved Daily Living Skills in the Individual Assessment, Therapy and/or Training (Includes Assistive Technology) category.
Bob’s support coordinator organised for an occupational therapist to carry out an assessment to make sure that learning to drive the forklift would be ok for Bob.
4. Using Improved Relationships in the Specialist Behaviour Intervention Support category.
Bob also needed some help with dealing with his emotions when his workmates got on his nerves or sometimes told a joke that he didn’t like. John also arranged some behaviour support to help him to learn and choose better ways to deal with his frustrations.
Bob met with his behaviour support person and they talked about times when Bob got angry at work and the types of things he could do if it started to happen. They made a plan together.
You can read more on this in our article Budget areas explained: Improved Relationships.
5. Using Improved Relationships in the Individual Social Skills Development category.
Bob also found it tricky to make new friends both at work and outside of work and was able to get some help with this and to think carefully about what makes a good friend.
All the hard work pays off.
In the end, Bob made some great steps towards achieving his employment-related NDIS goals.
- Bob got the go ahead to do the forklift training, based on the occupational therapist’s assessment.
- Fast forward six months and Bob is much happier at work. He has some made some new friends which he is really pleased about. He is able to manage his anger better with the help of the behaviour support and his outbursts have been fewer.
- Most importantly, Bob is now able to work on the forklift a couple of days a week as well as do the packing job on the other three days. He is really enjoying the variety and learning new things. He feels very proud of himself to have his forklift licence now and his Mum and Dad are really proud of him too!
Remember, Bob’s story is just an example and you might have completely different employment-related goals.
The process of breaking each goal down into different steps and identifying the supports you need for each step is a helpful way of making sure your goals happen.
Bob’s example is thanks to the Endeavour Foundation’s ‘Goal Series’ article: How to achieve your employment goals.
Questions? We’re here to help and you can speak with a member of the Leap in! Crew by calling 1300 05 78 78.
Find out more about supported employment with the Endeavour Foundation.
Further reading.
Employment: Taking the next step.