People with disabilities can transform their lives with willpower, determination, and saying yes to positive changes. While you must be taking some support services to take care of your physical health, managing your mental and emotional health is still a question. 

No matter how effective physical care and nursing programs are, a few changes in your routine trigger emotional behaviour. For this reason, the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) helps people with permanent disabilities live independently. It provides funding to support various mental and emotional health programs, which you can benefit from an NDIS provider in Albury. 

This blog will guide you to understand NDIS and its role in managing mental and emotional health problems. 

National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) 

The National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) is an Australian government scheme that provides funding for people with permanent disabilities. This scheme aims to make every Australian live independently and ensure that no disability should come in between their dreams. 

If you are a person with special needs, NDIS lays out eligibility requirements as follows:

• A person must be between 7-65 years of age 
• A person must be an Australian citizen, a permanent resident, or have a special Category visa.
• A person must have a permanent disability and be incapable of performing everyday tasks.

If you are eligible for NDIS, the next step is to apply for funding through their official website. When you are particularly seeking mental and emotional health support, you must request the same in your first NDIS Plan meeting with NDIS plan coordinators. Once your plan is approved, you can pick an NDIS provider in Albury to deliver all the mentioned services in your plan.

How Do NDIS Providers Support Mental and Emotional Health Challenges?

An NDIS provider understands that every individual is different. As people with disabilities live a mundane life, it is pretty much common for a person to feel overwhelmed at some point in their lives. Keeping this in mind, NDIS providers like PopularCare offer behaviour support services as a way to turn negative emotions into positive thinking. Here is how the process works.

• Initial Assessment:

The NDIS provider initially learns about the behaviour changes from the individual itself. If it is difficult to know about the mental health challenges directly from an NDIS participant, the NDIS support workers from PopularCare consider family or friend intervention to talk about emotional triggers. 

They analyse how a person reacts in difficult situations and what other circumstances affect their mental state. Alongside, they also understand how these emotional responses impact their ability to cope with disabilities.

• Developing Behaviour Support Plan:

The next step after learning about the emotional behaviour challenges of an NDIS participant is to develop an all-round Behaviour Support Plan (BSP). This includes techniques, responses, and skills that guarantee people with disabilities to overcome their emotional and mental challenges. Some of the things covered under the behaviour support plan are:

• Proactive Techniques:

The plan covers techniques to overcome negative behaviours. NDIS providers teach you to take control of challenging situations whenever they happen. This includes making changes to your environment, learning new ways of dealing with them, and talking to someone you trust. 

• Reactive Strategies:

It also includes strategies to respond to challenging situations. This plan is an alternative to proactive techniques. Let’s say you get angry around excess noise. The proactive step is to start being around quiet places. However, if it still does not work, providers like PopularCare also initiate reactive strategies. This includes taking short breaks, breathing slowly till you feel calm down, or talking to a family member. 

• Skill Development:

This section of the plan integrates teaching new behaviours in response to challenging situations. NDIS providers also teach new skills for anger management, fighting anxiety, stress, or overreacting to changes. It is more like replacing bad habits with good ones.

• Training and Support:

An NDIS participant may want to meet their family members or friends after spending some time in NDIS accommodation or after living a few months away from them. To maintain the efforts put into building a behaviour support plan, providers also train family members, caregivers, and healthcare workers to implement the plan without interruption.

• Monitoring the Efficiency of the Plan:

A behaviour support plan outlines positive behaviours, techniques, and positive reinforcements to make a person with an emotional disability feel positive. However, there could be times when the plan may not yield results, or an NDIS participant may develop other negative triggers. 

Eliminating such possible scenarios is important. An NDIS provider like PopularCare considers every aspect of behaviour change and periodically monitors the plan to see what works and what does not. 

• Handling Emergency Situations:

The NDIS provider also creates an emergency management plan that details emergencies and actions to address them. If someone’s behaviour gets out of control, then an emergency plan calms down the situation and makes sure that everyone is safe around.

For example, if someone is very upset or anxious about an incident, changes in their routine, or the behaviour of the other NDIS participant, here are a few ways an NDIS provider can tackle the situation.

• Move the person to a safe place.
• Speak calmly to a person who is upset.
• Offer a quiet place for the person to relax.
• Call for additional help if needed.

• Restrictive Practices:

When nothing else works to improve the person’s mental and emotional well-being, NDIS providers resort to the last step, i.e. restrictive practices. These methods keep someone from hurting themselves or others under unbearable situations or excess pressure to improve one’s life. Here are the two main types of restrictive practices that you must know.

• Physical Restraints:

This involves using physical methods to keep someone from moving and possibly hurting themselves or others. For example, if someone is hitting or kicking, a trained person might hold their arms to stop them. It is always done carefully, and support workers constantly monitor the actions to ensure everyone is safe. 

• Seclusion:

Another method is to separate the person from others for a few hours or days until the person feels calm and safe to get along with other NDIS participants. This step is also important to secure the safety of others who might not be aware about anyone’s emotional and mental disabilities. 

This kind of isolation given by trusted support workers is well-planned so that it is safe and not more harmful for the person’s own safety.

Final Words

We hope you enjoyed reading this blog. It focuses on the relationship between NDIS and emotional and mental health for people with permanent disabilities. The blog started with an introduction to NDIS for people seeking emotional and mental support for their disabilities. 

We then began understanding how an NDIS provider in Albury processes their behaviour support services. This includes taking control of the situation before it happens, responding calmly to challenging situations, teaching new coping methods, overseeing the impact of a behaviour support plan, training family members, and handling emergencies. We also learnt about the provider’s role in taking restrictive measures to keep the environment safe for everyone. 

If you are finding help with choosing NDIS providers in Albury, trust PopularCare for their best initiatives and analysis of the behaviour challenges.