stated-supports

Provisional article — seeded from NbLM. Requires Andrew's research to verify and expand.

Stated supports restrict the budget to specific categories or item codes within the NDIS PACE system. This contrasts with flexible supports, which allow participants to choose any item code within a funded category.

Stated supports are an essential risk management tool for coordinators, particularly when specific therapeutic interventions or specialist services must be preserved and not repurposed. The Participant Statement Toolkit includes "Block 3: PACE Budget Architecture Recommendations" where coordinators explicitly outline whether a support category should be Flexible or Stated.

Stated supports are applied as an exception to the flexible-by-default funding rule when there is a documented risk requiring funds to be ring-fenced. Making a support Stated means those funds cannot be spent flexibly — they are restricted to the specific category or item code. This is distinct from a Digital Lock, which restricts funds to a specific provider ABN; a Stated support restricts to a category or item code but does not specify a provider.

Coordinators document three elements in the Participant Statement (Block 5) to justify a Stated request:

RS-06 research (T2) adds specific operational detail about how PACE enforces Stated designations. In the PACE system (accessed via the MyNDIS provider portal), the Allocated Items table makes Stated restrictions visible and enforceable. The portal explicitly warns users: "Stated supports are intended solely for the purpose of that support" — they cannot be swapped for other supports. This removes the ambiguity that existed in Legacy plans, where a support might be calculated as stated (based on mathematical heuristics) without visual enforcement.

RS-06 research (T4) highlights a common pattern for Level 3 Specialist Support Coordination. Because Level 3 is an intensive specialised support requiring R132 registration, planners almost universally apply a Stated designation to Level 3 allocations within Category 07. This protects the Level 3 budget from being inadvertently depleted by lower-tier supports (Level 2 coordination or PRC) that share the same funding category.

This Stated lock operates in addition to the R132 registration ring-fence — together, they create a two-layer protection: the registration prevents unqualified providers from billing Level 3 at all, while the Stated designation prevents the budget itself from being spent on other supports even by R132-registered providers.