How much of your plan should go to Core Supports? A practical framework

Rather than starting with 'how much should go where,' start with a realistic list of everyday support needs — personal care, domestic tasks, transport, community participation — and roughly how many hours each genuinely takes per week. Since most of this falls under Core Supports, this exercise usually reveals your realistic Core Supports need fairly directly.

It helps to be specific and honest here, rather than optimistic. If domestic tasks genuinely take two hours of support a week, use that figure rather than a lower one that feels more modest — an underestimated Core Supports figure is one of the more common causes of a mid-plan shortfall.

Capacity Building funding is tied to specific skill-building or therapy goals — support coordination, allied health, or skills development. This is usually decided based on active goals discussed with your planner or Support Coordinator, rather than a proportion of the total budget. It's worth listing these goals explicitly, since vague goals tend to attract less funding than specific, well-justified ones.

A goal like 'improve independence' is much harder to fund clearly than something specific like 'build the skills to prepare a simple meal independently within six months,' with a named allied health professional attached to the goal. Specificity genuinely helps here, both for funding purposes and for actually tracking whether the goal is being met.

Capital Supports funds one-off, higher-cost items like equipment or home modifications, and is approved based on a specific assessed need rather than an ongoing weekly rate. It shouldn't be thought of as part of the same 'split' calculation as Core Supports and Capacity Building — it's a separate, need-triggered category.

Once you've estimated weekly Core Supports needs and listed specific Capacity Building goals, it's worth doing a rough total against what's realistically likely to be approved, based on past plans or a conversation with a Support Coordinator. This isn't an exact science, but it avoids walking into a planning meeting with either unrealistic expectations or an underestimate of genuine need.

The right split for a plan isn't fixed forever — a period of higher Capacity Building focus (working intensively on a specific skill, for example) might shift back toward a higher Core Supports proportion once that goal is met and day-to-day needs become the priority again. Treating the split as something to revisit at each review, rather than a decision made once and left alone, tends to lead to a plan that actually reflects current reality.

If your needs have genuinely shifted mid-plan — for example, a health change has increased daily support needs — it's worth raising this rather than waiting for the next scheduled review, particularly if the shift is significant enough to risk a shortfall in the meantime.

If you'd like to work through this framework specifically for your situation before a planning or review meeting, Valencea's co-founder Arash offers a free, no-obligation conversation to help you think it through. Call 0494 733 201, Monday to Friday, 9:00am–5:00pm.