Support Coordination is supposed to be independent. In a lot of cases, it structurally isn’t, and almost nobody says that part out loud.
Here’s the setup: a provider delivers Support Coordination and also delivers SIL, or therapy, or plan management, under the same roof. The coordinator’s job is to help a participant find the right supports for their goals. Their employer’s business model benefits when that participant chooses the employer’s own services instead of shopping around.
That’s not automatically corruption. Most coordinators in that position are genuinely trying to do right by their participants. But the structure creates a conflict of interest, whether or not anyone acts on it badly, and pretending otherwise doesn’t make it go away.
At Polaris Care, we’ve made a deliberate call on this: we don’t deliver Support Coordination and SIL to the same participant. Not as a compliance workaround, as an actual policy. We hold that line even when a participant or family specifically asks us to do both, because it’s more convenient for them to deal with one provider.
That’s a hard conversation sometimes. A family who trusts us and wants us handling everything doesn’t want to hear “we think you should get your coordination elsewhere.” But convenience for the family isn’t the same as protecting the family, and the whole point of coordination is that it’s supposed to be free of exactly the pressure that arrangement creates. If we’re recommending our own SIL house, that recommendation needs to survive scrutiny from someone with zero stake in the outcome. We can’t honestly claim that if we’re the ones coordinating and delivering.
What actually protects independence, in our experience:
– Full disclosure to every participant, in writing, before any recommendation is made
– A hard structural line between coordination and service delivery, not an internal policy relying on individual staff resisting pressure
– Actively presenting external provider options as standard practice, not an afterthought if someone asks
– Being willing to say “we’re not the right fit, and we won’t coordinate it either,” even when it costs the referral entirely
The NDIS built Support Coordination on the idea that participants get an independent advocate navigating a complex system for them. That promise only holds if coordinators are genuinely free to recommend the best option, not the most convenient one for the business paying their wage. In our view, the only way to guarantee that is not putting staff in that position at all.
If your Support Coordination and service delivery sit under the same provider, the honest question isn’t whether a conflict of interest exists. It’s whether “managing it” is actually enough, or whether the more honest answer is not doing both at all.
#NDIS #SupportCoordination #ConflictOfInterest #DisabilitySupport #ParticipantChoice
