What is NDIS Assistance with Daily Life?
The quick version
- Assistance with Daily Life is a Core Supports category for everyday disability-related tasks.
- It covers personal care, meal preparation and household tasks.
- The funding pays for your support worker’s time, not groceries or cleaning supplies.
- It’s different from Improved Daily Living, which funds therapy and skill-building.
- Core Supports can be either flexible or stated. If it is flexible, the funds are free to be shifted across the categories, but if it is stated, it usually can’t be shifted.
- St Jude’s provides disability home support across WA and QLD. Call (08) 9279 4343 or (07) 2800 6050.
If you’ve looked at your NDIS plan and noticed “Assistance with Daily Life” listed under Core Supports, you’re not alone in wondering what that actually means in practice. It’s one of the most commonly funded categories in the scheme, but the name doesn’t make it obvious what’s included or how it works day-to-day.
This guide breaks it down in plain language, with real examples of what the funding looks like on the ground and a clear rundown of what’s in and what’s not.
What is Assistance with Daily Life under the NDIS?
NDIS Assistance with Daily Life is one of the support categories within your Core Supports budget. It funds hands-on help with the everyday activities that become harder because of your disability, from personal care and cooking through to cleaning.Â
The NDIA describes it as funding you might use to hire support workers who help with cleaning, cooking, and personal care. It sits alongside two other Core sub-categories: consumables, and assistance with social and community participation.
One thing to be clear on from the start is that NDIS assistance with daily life funds the support worker’s time and expertise, not the items used along the way. Groceries, cleaning products, and personal care items are all everyday living costs regardless of your NDIS plan. It’s also worth knowing that core supports for daily activities make up the single largest spending area across the entire NDIS, which gives you a sense of how central this kind of daily life support is to how people use their funding.
What does NDIS Assistance with Daily Life cover?
The exact in-home support you receive depends on your goals and what the NDIA considers reasonable and necessary, but here’s what this category typically funds.
Personal care and daily routines
This includes help with showering, dressing, grooming, and toileting. A support worker might arrive at 7 am to help you shower, get dressed, and have breakfast before you head out for the day, and for some people, that support extends into the evening too, with help winding down and managing a bedtime routine. That kind of structure can be the difference between a chaotic morning and one that sets you up well.
Your support worker can also help with medication reminders and administering medication, keeping your daily schedule on track. They may be able to assist with other high intensity routines, like suppositories, wound care, peg feed, insulin and more provided they have received training.
Household tasks and meal preparation
This covers the domestic side of things: cleaning, laundry, vacuuming, doing the dishes, changing bed linen, and general home organisation. Meal preparation is included too, from planning meals and preparing ingredients through to cooking and cleaning up afterwards. Light yard maintenance can also be funded, so long as it’s directly related to your disability support needs.
While all of this sits under Assistance with Daily Life, it isn’t set up or charged in quite the same way as personal care. The NDIS treats personal care, house cleaning and other household activities, and house or yard maintenance as three separate support items, each with its own price limit (the most a provider can charge per hour). Personal care rates go up for evenings, nights, weekends, and public holidays, while cleaning and yard maintenance are charged at one hourly rate no matter when the work is done. That’s handy to know when you’re checking which item your provider has claimed on your service agreement or invoices.
If you’d like a closer look at how household tasks assistance works under the NDIS, we’ve covered that separately. As with personal care, the funding covers the support worker’s time rather than the cost of food, ingredients, or cleaning supplies.
Getting to appointments and activities
Your assistance with daily life NDIS funding can also cover a support worker accompanying you to medical appointments, therapy sessions, or other activities connected to your plan goals. The support worker’s time is funded, including travel within the limits set in the NDIS Pricing Schedule.
It’s worth knowing that your own transport funding is a separate, ring-fenced part of your plan. You can’t use Assistance with Daily Life money to pay for transport services directly, but you can fund the support worker who helps you get there and back.
What it doesn’t cover
This is where a lot of confusion happens. The general rule is that NDIS assistance with daily life pays for the support, not the stuff, and the table below sets out the main distinctions.
| Covered (support worker’s time) | Not covered (everyday expenses) |
| Help with showering, dressing, grooming | Groceries, food, and ingredient costs |
| Meal preparation and cooking support | Cleaning supplies and household items |
| Cleaning, laundry, and home organisation | Medical treatment or clinical care |
| Accompanying you to appointments | General home maintenance unrelated to disability |
| Medication reminders and routine support | Recreational event tickets or entry fees |
| Light yard maintenance | Rent, utilities, and everyday bills |
One that catches people off guard is recreational outings. If your support worker takes you to a concert, the NDIS funds their time, but it won’t pay for your ticket or theirs. The same applies to movies, gym memberships, and other recreational costs.
If you’re unsure about whether a specific item is covered, the NDIA publishes a list of included and excluded supports that’s worth checking.
Assistance with Daily Life vs Improved Daily Living
This is probably the most common point of confusion in the NDIS, and it’s easy to see why when two categories share nearly identical names but do very different things.
Assistance with Daily Life sits under Core Supports and funds hands-on help right now. A support worker does tasks with you or for you; it’s flexible across the Core sub-categories, and you can use it as your needs change week to week.
Improved Daily Living sits under Capacity Building and funds therapy and skill-building that help you do more for yourself over time. That means occupational therapy, physiotherapy, speech pathology, and psychology. These are classified as “stated” supports, so the funding is locked to that specific purpose and can’t be swapped for something else.
The simplest way to think about it: Core helps you do the task. Capacity Building helps you learn the skill.
This distinction matters more since 1 July 2025, when the NDIA removed therapy supports funded through the Core budget entirely. Before that, some therapy could be claimed from either budget. Now it must come through Capacity Building, and if that allocation is light, Core can no longer plug the gap.
How the funding works in your plan
Your NDIS assistance with daily life funding appears under the Core Supports budget, which is the most flexible budget in your plan. You can generally shift money between Core sub-categories without requesting a plan review. So if you need less community participation support one quarter and more in-home support, you have the flexibility to adjust. If you’re working with a plan manager, they can help you track where your spending sits across these categories.
One recent change to be aware of is that since 19 May 2025, new and reassessed plans release funding in quarterly periods rather than all at once. Your total budget stays the same, but you access it in installments, and unspent money rolls over within the same plan. It just means thinking about spreading your support across each quarter rather than front-loading.
How to make sure it’s in your plan
If you don’t currently have Assistance with Daily Life in your plan, or you think you need more, here’s how to approach it.
Start by writing down the specific areas where you need the most help, whether that’s showering, cooking, keeping the house clean, getting to appointments, or something else entirely. The more detail you can give your planner, the easier it is for them to assess what’s reasonable and necessary.
Ask your GP, OT, or other allied health professional for a report that describes how your disability affects these everyday tasks. The NDIA makes decisions based on the evidence you provide, and detailed reports from treating professionals carry real weight.
When you talk to your planner, frame everything around independence and participation. Under the NDIS Act, funded supports must help you “undertake activities, so as to facilitate your social or economic participation,” so describe how the support helps you live safely at home and take part in your community.
If you’re unsure where to start, a support coordinator can help you prepare for your planning meeting and make sure your plan reflects what you actually need. You can also find more detail on the full application process.
How we can help
That’s where we come in. Here at St Jude’s, we’re an NDIS-registered disability and aged care provider that’s been supporting people across Western Australia and Queensland for over 40 years.
Our in-home support teams in WA and QLD cover personal care, household tasks, meal preparation, and everything else that falls under your Assistance with Daily Life funding. We also offer support coordination, allied health therapies, and a wide range of other disability services to help you get the most out of your plan.
We don’t provide NDIS funding. That comes from the NDIA. What we provide is the support and coordination that helps you use that funding well.
Call us in WA on (08) 9279 4343, or in QLD on (07) 2800 6050. You can also get in touch online.
Call (08) 9279 4343 (WA)
Call (07) 2800 6050 (QLD)
You don’t need to have everything figured out before you reach out.
Frequently Asked Questions
Yes, within the rules. Core Supports is the most flexible budget in your NDIS plan, so you can shift funding between its sub-categories without a plan review. Everything you spend still needs to meet the reasonable and necessary criteria, and you can’t move funds into a different budget type like Capacity Building.
In some circumstances, yes. The NDIA can approve a family member or close friend as a paid support worker, but only where the usual arrangements aren’t available or appropriate. It’s not automatic and specific criteria apply, so it’s worth raising with your planner or support coordinator if you’d like to explore it.
The NDIA says that’s okay. Call 1800 800 110, and they’ll help you fix it. Since October 2025, the grace period for small unintentional claims has ended, so it’s worth double-checking which category a support falls under before claiming.
Both sit under Core Supports, but they cover different things. Assistance with Daily Life funds personal care and household support, while community participation funding covers social activities, recreational programmes, and skill-building outside the home. Because Core is flexible, you can shift funding between the two as your needs change.
No. Whether you live with family, in a shared arrangement, or on your own, you can access NDIS assistance with daily life funding. The NDIA assesses what’s reasonable and necessary based on your individual needs and goals, not your living situation.