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What is Capacity Building?

Capacity Building is the NDIS budget category funding supports that build a participant’s skills and independence rather than assisting with daily tasks. It covers therapy, employment supports, improved living arrangements, and support coordination. Unlike Core, funding is allocated to specific sub-categories and cannot be moved between them.

The rigidity is the point: the NDIA allocates Capacity Building against stated goals in the participant’s plan, so therapy funding cannot be redirected to daily support hours.

Support coordination and psychosocial recovery coaching are both funded here, which is why a coordination provider’s budget conversations look different from a support provider’s — the money genuinely cannot be borrowed from elsewhere.

The nine support categories

A Capacity Building budget can have funding in up to 9 support categories:

  • Support coordination: usually time-limited help to use the plan and providers.
  • Improved living arrangements: help to find and keep a suitable place to live. Bond and rent are not covered.
  • Increased social and community participation: help to find and join activities and build social skills.
  • Finding and keeping a job: time-limited employment supports for working-age participants.
  • Improved relationships: behaviour support plans, behaviour supports and social skills development.
  • Improved health and wellbeing: for example a dietitian or exercise physiologist.
  • Improved learning: help moving from school to further education.
  • Improved life choices: skills to manage the plan, and funding for a plan manager if the participant has one.
  • Improved daily living: assessments, training and therapies such as speech or occupational therapy.

Capacity Building funding is stated

Funding cannot be moved between Capacity Building categories, and it can only buy the supports described in each category, drawn from the NDIS supports lists. Within a category there is still choice. For example, therapy funding can be spent on whichever therapy best supports the participant's impairments, such as physiotherapy or occupational therapy.

Outcomes and plan reassessment

These supports are meant to build skills and independence and reduce the need for the same level of support in future. The NDIA discusses progress and outcomes from Capacity Building supports at each plan reassessment, so therapists and coordinators should report against the participant's goals.

Changes to how budgets appear

The NDIA has said it is moving to a new way of showing budgets. A participant's next plan may list Capacity Building supports as individual funding components rather than grouped as a support budget, but it will still show whether each support is flexible or stated.

Questions people ask

Can you move Capacity Building funding to Core?

No. Capacity Building funding is stated, so it can only be spent on the supports described in each Capacity Building category.

Is the plan manager paid from Capacity Building?

Yes. Funding for a plan manager sits in the Improved Life Choices category of Capacity Building.

What does Improved Daily Living cover?

Assessments, training and therapies that build living skills and independence, such as speech therapy or occupational therapy.

Checked against the official sources on 2 October 2026. Rules change: confirm the current position with the agency before you rely on it.

Related terms

Core SupportsCore Supports is the NDIS budget category funding everyday assistance: personal care, help with household tasks, community participation, transport, and consumables. It is the most flexible category — funding generally moves freely between most Core support items — and it is where the majority of a typical participant’s plan sits.Capital SupportsCapital Supports is the NDIS budget category funding one-off, higher-cost items: assistive technology, home and vehicle modifications, and Specialist Disability Accommodation. Funding is tied to specific approved items, usually requires a quote and often an allied health assessment, and cannot be spent on anything else.Support coordinationSupport coordination is a funded NDIS support in which a coordinator helps a participant understand and use their plan: finding and connecting providers, negotiating service agreements, building the participant’s capacity to manage their own supports, and resolving problems when supports break down.

More in NDIS

NDISNDIAParticipantPlan management

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