How to Write an NDIS Progress Report (Plan Reassessment Report)

Progress report or plan reassessment report?

Both terms are in daily use and they are not quite the same thing. The NDIA uses plan reassessment for the process of replacing a plan with a new one, and its provider guidance names the allied health document a plan reassessment report. "Progress report" is the NDIA’s term for the more general report a service provider writes to summarise supports delivered and outcomes achieved (NDIS, Guide to report writing).

In practice, when a support coordinator or participant asks an OT, physio, speech pathologist or psychologist for a "progress report" before a plan ends, the document they need is the plan reassessment report. Name it that way on the cover page. It costs nothing and it tells the reader immediately which decision the report is for.

The six steps at a glance

Use this as the checklist before you send. Every row is a step the NDIA publishes, with what it asks the report to show.

Step 2: service details are six specific things

This section is often written as a paragraph of background and it should not be. The NDIA lists six elements: the type of service provided, the therapeutic approach used, the duration of supports, the frequency of supports, the goals worked towards, and the intended outcome of delivering those supports.

Write them as six labelled lines. A reader comparing what was funded against what was delivered can then do it in seconds, and the rest of the report is read in that context.

Step 3: evidence outcomes, do not describe activity

This is where most reports are weakest. Describing what you delivered — sessions attended, programs run — is activity. The NDIA asks for progress: a summary of the participant’s functional capacity at the start of the plan, the assessment measures you used, the therapies trialled, and how functional ability moved, quantified against the goals.

The NDIA’s own examples of assessment measures are the Timed Up and Go test, the 6-minute walk test and the Berg Balance Scale. Those are physical examples; the principle is the same for any discipline. Use the tools you actually chose, report the baseline and the current figure with dates, and say what the change means for daily life. A number without a functional consequence is as weak as a description without a number. For the whole-of-person tool most used in Australian reports, see using WHODAS 2.0 in an NDIS FCA.

Anchor every entry to a goal from the current plan and report against each one in turn. That structure shows the reader exactly what the funding achieved, which is the case for continuing it.

Barriers, challenges and risk are required, not optional

The NDIA asks the report to address any obstacles encountered, how they were addressed, whether the therapy approach needed to be reviewed, and — where goals were not achieved — why. It separately asks for the risks to the participant and how those risks were addressed.

Clinicians often leave this out, worrying that it weakens the case. It does the opposite. A report that says a goal was not met, explains why, and shows what was changed in response reads as clinical reasoning. A report where every goal was met and nothing went wrong reads as a sales document, and the reader discounts it.

Steps 4 and 5: additional supports, then recommendations

Step 4 is broader than NDIS funding. The NDIA asks what further NDIS, informal, community or mainstream supports could help, plus a summary of anything you have referred on. Naming the informal and mainstream options shows you are not routing everything to the plan.

Step 5 is the recommendations themselves: the supports for the next period and the progress expected from them, the justification for anything more or different, and the outcomes and risks to other supports. The NDIA sets out four questions to test each recommendation against:

• Is the support within your scope of practice?
• How is it linked to the therapy outcomes and the participant’s goals?
• How will it enhance and coordinate with the rest of the participant’s life?
• What is the risk if the support is not provided?

Carry the reasonable and necessary reasoning through

A plan reassessment report is not exempt from the funding test. Every recommendation still has to satisfy the criteria in section 34 of the NDIS Act, and the reader is applying that test whether or not your report mentions it.

Where a support should continue, evidence that the need persists. Where it should reduce, evidence the gain in capacity and say so plainly — a report that recommends a reduction where the evidence supports one makes every other recommendation in the document more credible.

Step 6: share it with the participant

The NDIA is explicit that the report goes to the participant. Providers write the report and share it with the participant first; with the participant’s consent, the provider can upload it to the provider portal rather than the participant submitting it themselves.

Two practical consequences. Write in language the participant can read, because they will read it. And agree upfront who is uploading, so the report does not sit with the participant while the reassessment date passes.

How long should it be?

The NDIA publishes no length requirement for these reports, and neither its allied health page nor its report-writing guide states a word count. Anyone quoting you a fixed number is quoting a convention, not a rule.

Length follows the six steps: long enough to give service details, a baseline, measured progress against each goal, the barriers and risks, and justified recommendations — and no longer. A plan reassessment report is normally much shorter than a functional capacity assessment, because it is reporting change against goals that are already established rather than establishing capacity from scratch.

Where Carearoo fits

Carearoo drafts progress and plan reassessment reports from your notes onto your own Word template, structured around the six steps above, so the service details, goal-by-goal progress, barriers, risks and recommendations all land in the order the reader expects. It produces a draft you review, edit and sign. You keep full clinical responsibility, and the assessment figures are yours, not the model’s. Your first report is free.

Frequently asked questions

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