The biggest change to NDIS planning in years is beginning its rollout. From mid-2026, the Agency starts introducing a new framework planning approach built around a standardised assessment tool called the I-CAN v6, gradually shifting away from the patchwork of costly specialist reports many participants have relied on. Here’s a clear, honest guide to what’s coming.
What the I-CAN Actually Is
The I-CAN, short for Instrument for the Classification and Assessment of Support Needs, is an Australian-developed assessment tool refined over more than twenty years and grounded in the World Health Organisation’s International Classification of Functioning. It has been selected as the base for the NDIA’s new Support Needs Assessment for participants aged 16 and over.
Rather than a stack of clinical reports, it’s a structured, guided conversation with a trained assessor covering twelve areas of daily life, including communication, mobility, self-care, learning, mental health, social connection and behaviours of concern. It’s paired with questionnaires about your personal and environmental circumstances, with further targeted assessments for people with more complex needs.
“This evidence-based and person-centred tool has been researched and refined here in Australia,” said Associate Professor Mary-Ann O’Donovan, CEO of the Centre for Disability Studies, which is partnering with the University of Melbourne to deliver it.
Why the Change
The driver is a problem most participants know intimately: report fatigue. Under the current approach, families often pay for multiple allied health reports, repeat their story at every review, and receive outcomes that vary depending on who wrote the paperwork. The 2023 NDIS Review recommended a consistent national assessment so that two people with comparable needs receive comparable outcomes, regardless of postcode or the polish of their documentation.
There’s a cost shift too: unlike privately sourced reports, the new assessment is funded by the NDIA at no cost to participants.
The Rollout, and the Honest Caveats
The framework is being introduced in stages from mid-2026, deliberately gradual so participants can give real-time feedback. Existing plans stay in place, nothing changes until the process reaches you, typically at a plan review, and the NDIA has said trained staff, not algorithms, make the final decisions on plans.
It’s equally honest to say the disability community has raised genuine concerns: whether the tool captures fluctuating and complex needs well, how it will work across autistic participants, psychosocial disability and culturally diverse communities, and how much weight your own clinicians’ evidence will carry. These details are still being settled, and advocacy groups are pushing for transparency as the rollout proceeds. Official updates are on the NDIS announcement page.
How to Prepare
The preparation that works is the same regardless of the tool. Start a simple daily impact log now: note where you needed support across everyday life, including bad days, flare-ups and the hidden effort behind tasks you technically completed. Standardised assessments reward honest, concrete detail about real days, not best days.
Keep your goals clearly linked to function, “I need X support to manage Y barrier so I can do Z”, and keep existing specialist reports current, since complex needs will still call on them. And if you have a plan review approaching, ask your planner or support coordinator directly whether the new assessment will apply to you.
The Bigger Picture
Standardising assessment is the connective tissue of the wider reforms: consistent inputs are what make consistent budgets possible. Whether the I-CAN delivers fairness in practice will depend on assessor quality and how well the tool handles complexity, and that story will unfold over the next two years. What participants can control is preparation, and the ones who document their real support needs now will walk into the new process in the strongest position.
Epik Wire covers NDIS reform in plain language for participants and families. Subscribe to our newsletter to stay informed.
