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What we do

The NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission is an independent agency established to improve the quality and safety of NDIS supports and services.
We are working with NDIS participants, service providers, workers and the community to introduce a new nationally consistent approach so participants can access services and supports that promote choice, control and dignity.
The NDIS Commission:
  • responds to concerns, complaints and reportable incidents, including abuse and neglect of NDIS participants 
  • promotes the NDIS principles of choice and control, and works to empower participants to exercise their rights to access quality services as informed, protected consumers
  • requires NDIS providers to uphold participants' rights to be free from harm
  • registers and regulates NDIS providers and oversees the new NDIS Code of Conduct and NDIS Practice Standards 
  • provides guidance and best practice information to NDIS providers on how to comply with their registration responsibilities 
  • monitors compliance against the NDIS Code of Conduct and NDIS Practice Standards, including undertaking investigations and taking enforcement action 
  • monitors the use of restrictive practices within the NDIS with the aim of reducing and eliminating such practices 
  • is working in collaboration with states and territories to design and implement nationally consistent NDIS worker screening
  • focuses on education, capacity building and development for people with disability, NDIS providers and workers
  • facilitates information sharing with the National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIA), state and territory authorities and other Commonwealth regulatory bodies.

The NDIS Commission is independent of the NDIA

Both the NDIS Commission and the NDIA play a part in ensuring the delivery of the NDIS.

The NDIA’s focus is on:

  • providing individualised plans for people with disability
  • coordinating service bookings, payments and access to plans for providers

The NDIA will also detect and investigate allegations of fraud.

The NDIS Commission does not regulate the NDIA. Complaints about the NDIA or participant plans should be made directly to the NDIA.

Why we exist

The NDIS represents a fundamental change to the way people with disability are supported in their everyday lives. This change requires the right systems and protections to be in place to oversee NDIS services and supports.

When the NDIS was launched, governments agreed that a nationally consistent approach to quality and safeguards would be a critical component of the scheme. The NDIS Quality and Safeguarding Framework was developed to achieve this. The Framework is designed to promote high quality supports and safe environments for all NDIS participants.

The NDIS Commission brings together various quality and safeguards functions under a single agency for the first time, with a suite of education and regulatory powers that apply across Australia. This will improve consistency in regulation and registration for providers in different states and territories.

NDIS Participants

As the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission comes into effect across Australia, participants will notice changes to the complaints process, and to the way behaviour supports and restrictive practices are managed.

NDIS service providers

Providers will notice changes to registration, complaints, incident management and reportable incidents, behaviour support and worker screening. These changes will simplify quality and safeguards requirements, as they will become nationally consistent and proportionate once we are operating in all states and territories by mid-2020. We will work with you to improve the quality of NDIS supports and services. 

Workers

To support the quality and safeguarding of NDIS participants, workers delivering NDIS supports and services work under the NDIS Code of Conduct, complaints management process, and worker screening rules.

Workers employed or engaged by NDIS providers will benefit from the introduction of the NDIS Worker Screening Check and NDIS Worker Screening Database, which provides a single national check for workers providing NDIS disability supports and services.

NDIS market oversight

The NDIS Commission will provide market oversight by collecting, analysing and advising on a range of unique data to identify trends and changes in the NDIS market.

This information will highlight the emerging benefits and risks, service delivery trends, quality issues and other important factors that help governments and the market to shape the NDIS over time.

The NDIS Commission’s market oversight role will complement, not replace, the NDIA’s planning and scheme management role.

The NDIS Commission will release more information about this important function over time.