The Independent Review of the NDIS recommended shifting the basis for setting a budget from individual support items to a 'whole of person' level, supported by new needs assessment processes. 

This position statement offers recommendations to guide the Australian Government's transition to a new human rights-based needs assessment model. It urges policymakers and stakeholders to embed human rights, co-design and trusted relationships at the centre of this reform. The recommendations are grounded in the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, recent analysis from the NDIS Review and other relevant evidence. 

It maintains that a human rights-based model of needs assessment will:

1. recognise diversity and intersectionality
2. embed accessibility tolls and supporting resources
3. ensure active participation of people with disability and their support networks
4. incorporate access to independent supported decision-making
5. consider impacts of co-occurring or intersecting disabilities
6. equally weight lived experience alongside other forms of evidence.

Recommendations

• Flexibility in assessment processes.
• Equally weighted self assessments.
• Transparency and accountability in methodologies.
• Commitment to best practice in accessibility.
• Appeals process.