NDIS Update: Understanding the I-CAN Assessment
The National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) has announced that the I-CAN Assessment (Instrument for the Classification and Assessment of Support Needs) will be its preferred tool for understanding and planning participant support needs. The announcement came quickly, and for many families and practitioners it raised more questions than answers. This guide is designed to explain what the I-CAN assessment actually is, how it works, and what the current conversation in the disability community looks like, including the concerns that have not yet been resolved.
Developed by the Centre for Disability Studies at the University of Sydney and grounded in the World Health Organisation's International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health, the I-CAN has been used in Australia since 2002 and is now in its sixth version. It is currently validated for use with people aged 16 and over, though some assessors are using it with younger participants outside that validated range.
The NDIA has partnered with the University of Melbourne and the Centre for Disability Studies to develop and implement the new assessment process, with the first participants expected to move to the new planning approach from mid-2026 through a phased rollout. For many families, an upcoming plan review may be the first time they encounter it.
At The Inclusive Movement, our practitioners have completed I-CAN assessor training. The training window was open for only a very short period, and as a result there are currently very few clinicians across Australia who hold this qualification, including many allied health practitioners who are not yet familiar with the process. We are writing from direct experience with the tool, and we want to give you an honest account of both how it works and where legitimate questions remain.
What the Disability Community Is Saying
Before we explain how the I-CAN works, it is important to acknowledge what many in the disability community are feeling right now. The NDIS announcement was made without significant lead time, and the concerns that have emerged since are real, grounded, and worth taking seriously.
Many autistic advocates and disability organisations have raised hesitation about the introduction of the I-CAN as a mandated NDIS assessment tool. Key concerns include:
There is limited evidence that the I-CAN assessment is neuroaffirming, or that it will accurately capture the support needs of autistic people and others with complex or fluctuating needs.
The way the NDIS intends to use the assessment results, including who will administer it and what qualifications or lived experience those staff will hold, has not been made clear.
Participants are unlikely to have choice and control over who conducts their I-CAN assessment. It appears the NDIS will manage this process internally, which is a significant departure from the choice-based principles the scheme was founded on.
While the language of the tool is positive, with I Can statements focusing on what a person can do, advocates have raised concerns that this framing could work against participants in practice. If the assessment emphasises capability without adequate context about when and how support makes that capability possible, it risks being used to reduce funding in areas where genuine need exists.
Our position at The Inclusive Movement
We are trained in the I-CAN and we use it as one of a range of assessment tools to communicate our clients' holistic support needs accurately. That is different from endorsing it as the sole measure of what a person requires. We do not yet know what the full impact of the NDIS's rollout will be on participant funding, and we are watching closely alongside our community.
Our role at The Inclusive Movement and Grow Therapy Services is to ensure that the assessments we contribute to capture the whole person, not just the moments when everything is going well. That means advocating clearly for what our clients need, regardless of which tool is being used.
With that context in place, here is what we know about how the I-CAN assessment actually works.
Why the NDIS Is Moving to the I-CAN Assessment
For many years, the NDIS relied on Functional Capacity Assessments to understand what a participant needed and why. These assessments served an important purpose, but the system had a significant drawback: participants often needed multiple separate reports from different practitioners, each one costly and time-consuming, before their support needs were fully documented. The I-CAN Assessment was developed to address this directly.
The I-CAN offers a single, standardised way to understand a participant's support needs across their whole life, rather than piece by piece. It is designed to reduce the burden on participants and families of gathering multiple reports, and to give NDIS planners a consistent, transparent basis for building a participant's budget. Rather than relying on a medical diagnosis alone, the I-CAN looks at how much support a person actually needs to live the life they choose.
The shift also reflects a change in language within the NDIS. The I-CAN is built on the principle that people with disability should be seen as more than a list of deficits, and that a good assessment should open a conversation about goals and aspirations, not just document limitations. This aligns with the values we hold at The Inclusive Movement. However, language and implementation are two different things, and as noted above, the community is rightly watching to see whether the strengths-based framing of the tool translates into outcomes that genuinely reflect what participants need.
What Does the I-CAN Assessment Actually Cover?
The I-CAN Assessment looks at twelve areas of everyday life, called domains. Each domain covers a different aspect of how a person moves through the world, from physical tasks like mobility and self-care through to communication, relationships, mental health, and behaviour. Together, these twelve domains aim to build a picture of the whole person and the supports they need across their entire life, not just in one or two areas.
The twelve domains are: Mobility, Domestic Life, Self-Care, Community Social and Civic Life, Communication, Learning and Applying Knowledge, General Tasks and Demands, Lifelong Learning, Interpersonal Interactions and Relationships, Behaviour of Concern, Mental and Emotional Health, and Physical Health. Each domain also includes subdomains that allow the assessor to get specific about which aspects of that area require support and which do not.
One of the most discussed features of the I-CAN is how it frames support needs. Instead of recording what a person cannot do, the assessor writes what is known as an I Can statement: a description of what the person can achieve when the right supports are in place. In practice, this might look like noting that a participant can prepare a meal when given step-by-step prompts, rather than simply recording that they cannot cook independently.
This is a meaningful shift in language and in intent. However, community concerns centre on whether the qualifier, that is, the support required to make the I Can statement true, will be weighted appropriately in funding decisions. The framing is only as useful as the system that interprets it.
Image Description: The 12 domains of the I-CAN Assessment, each covering a different area of everyday life.
The assessment is also designed to be flexible and collaborative. Participants can skip domains that are not relevant to their life, take breaks during the process, and choose to answer more personal questions privately if they prefer. The assessor draws on existing reports, medical history, and input from the participant's support network, which means families, support workers, and allied health practitioners all play a role in shaping the outcome.
How the Scoring Works
Once the assessor has worked through the relevant domains with the participant and their support network, each domain is given two separate scores. The first score captures how often support is needed (frequency). The second captures how intensive that support needs to be (type of support). Together, these two scores give NDIS planners a picture of what a participant's day-to-day life actually requires.
Frequency is scored on a scale from zero to five, where zero means the person never needs support in that area and five means support is needed continuously. The scores in between reflect how regularly support is required, whether that is daily, weekly, or at other intervals.
The type of support score also runs from zero to five, but it measures intensity rather than regularity. A score of zero means the person is fully independent in that area. A score of one, called Managed Independence, means the person can manage with the help of aids or equipment such as a wheelchair, hearing aids, or a communication device. From there, the scale moves through Minor support, Moderate support, Extensive support, and finally Pervasive support at level five, which means the person needs the direct, simultaneous support of two or more people at the same time.
Image Description: How the I-CAN Assessment scores the type and intensity of support needed in each domain.
What makes this scoring system significant is that it moves funding decisions away from broad diagnostic categories and toward a more specific understanding of what a person needs to participate in daily life. However, the way in which these scores are interpreted and weighted within the NDIS planning process has not yet been made fully transparent. This is one of the central concerns raised by disability advocates: without clarity on how scores translate into budgets, it is difficult for participants and families to know whether the assessment will work in their favour.
How Is the I-CAN Different from a Functional Capacity Assessment?
If you have been through the NDIS before, you may already be familiar with Functional Capacity Assessments. Both tools are used within the NDIS to document support needs, but they take quite different approaches.
A Functional Capacity Assessment (FCA) focuses on specific functional areas and documents what a person can and cannot do within those areas. It is typically completed by a single allied health practitioner, such as an occupational therapist, and the findings are used as evidence to support a funding request. The FCA has been a useful tool, but its framing tends to be deficit-focused: the report documents limitations in order to justify support, rather than building a picture of what a person can achieve with the right help in place.
The I-CAN takes a broader and more collaborative approach. Rather than one practitioner assessing specific functional tasks, the I-CAN draws on input from the participant themselves, their family and support network, and any existing reports or medical history. It covers all twelve life domains rather than targeted functional areas, which means it aims to capture a wider view of a person's life. It also goes beyond documenting need: the I-CAN generates goals and can recommend when additional assessments may be helpful.
What are the key differences between a Functional Capacity Assessment and the I-CAN Assessment?
Functional Capacity Assessment
Focus What a person can and cannot do in specific functional areas
Framing Deficit-focused: documents limitations to justify funding
Input Single allied health practitioner
Scope Targeted functional areas
Purpose Evidence for funding request
I-CAN Assessment
Focus What a person can achieve across all twelve life domains with the right supports
Framing Strengths-based: builds "I Can" statements from capability
Input Collaborative: participant, family, support network, existing reports
Scope Whole-of-life across twelve domains
Purpose Evidence plus goal planning and recommendations for further assessment
In theory, the I-CAN's design is a step forward from the FCA's deficit-focused approach. In practice, the community's concern is whether the implementation will reflect those intentions. For families who want to be prepared regardless of how the rollout unfolds, knowing both tools and how they differ is a useful starting point.
What Happens During an I-CAN Assessment?
Knowing what to expect from an I-CAN Assessment can make a real difference to how comfortable and prepared a participant feels going in. The assessment is conducted as a structured interview by a trained assessor, and it typically takes around three hours in total. That said, the process is designed with flexibility built in. Participants can take breaks at any point, skip domains that are not relevant to their life, and choose to answer more personal questions privately if they would prefer.
You are encouraged to bring someone with you. A family member, support worker, friend, or support coordinator can attend and contribute to the conversation, and their input is genuinely valued as part of the process. Because the I-CAN draws on a whole-of-person understanding, the assessor will also want to review any existing reports and medical history before or during the session. Gathering these documents in advance can make the process smoother and help ensure the assessment reflects an accurate picture of the participant's life.
The assessor will work through the twelve domains with you, asking questions about how often support is needed in each area and what kind of support makes the biggest difference. Not every domain will be relevant to every participant, and the I-CAN process allows the assessor to focus on what matters most for that individual.
The outcome of the assessment is not just a set of scores. The assessor produces I Can statements for each relevant domain, documents the frequency and intensity of support needed, and where appropriate, recommends further assessments that may be useful. This means the I-CAN can inform a participant's NDIS budget and open the door to additional allied health support where there is genuine need.
Who Can Conduct an I-CAN Assessment?
This is one of the areas where things remain unclear, and it is worth being direct about that.
For assessments conducted through private practitioners, the I-CAN must be completed by a trained assessor who holds an eligible tertiary qualification and has completed the official I-CAN assessor training. The professions currently eligible include occupational therapists, physiotherapists, speech pathologists, social workers, dietitians, psychologists, exercise physiologists, rehabilitation counsellors, counsellors, psychotherapists, developmental educators, registered nurses, enrolled nurses, clinicians with an education degree, and NDIS Behaviour Support Practitioners.
However, it is important to note that the NDIS has indicated the I-CAN assessment process will primarily be conducted internally, as an NDIS-managed process. This means most participants will not have the option to choose their own assessor or request a practitioner who already knows them. The qualifications, lived experience background, and training of the NDIS staff who will administer the tool have not yet been specified publicly, and this is a legitimate concern that advocates have raised.
It is also worth noting that the I-CAN assessor training programme was open for enrolment for a very short period only. As a result, the number of privately qualified assessors across Australia is small. Many allied health practitioners, and many families, will be encountering this tool for the first time without much guidance from their existing support networks. We mention this not to alarm, but because it is useful context: if your clinician does not know the I-CAN yet, that is not unusual. The information in this guide is a reasonable starting point.
Our practitioners at The Inclusive Movement and Grow Therapy Services have completed I-CAN assessor training and are actively using the tool within our clinical work to advocate for our clients' full support needs. If you have questions about what the assessment process would look like, we are happy to talk it through with you.
What This Means for Your NDIS Plan
For participants and families, the shift to the I-CAN Assessment is not just a change in paperwork. It represents a different way of thinking about how support needs are understood and communicated. The most immediate change many families will notice is in the language of reports and planning conversations. Where previous assessments led with what a person could not do, the I-CAN leads with what they can achieve with the right supports in place.
That shift in framing can be meaningful. It can also be complicated. The concern raised by disability advocates is that a focus on capability, without sufficient weight given to the conditions under which that capability exists, could leave gaps in how genuine need is recorded. If a participant can complete a task with extensive support, the I Can statement should make that support visible, not invisible.
Your input, and the input of the people who know the participant best, is more important under the I-CAN than it has ever been. Because the assessment draws on a collaborative picture of the participant's life, the information that families, support workers, and allied health practitioners contribute will directly shape the outcome. Providing as much relevant information as possible before the assessment, including recent reports, medical history, and a clear sense of the participant's goals, gives the assessor the foundation they need to produce an accurate and meaningful result.
For families who want to understand more about how an NDIS plan is structured and how to make the most of it, our post on What's in Your NDIS Plan covers this in detail.
How to Prepare for Your I-CAN Assessment
If you have an upcoming NDIS plan review and the I-CAN Assessment will be used, a little preparation can go a long way. The assessment is designed to be collaborative and participant-led, which means the more information you can bring to the conversation, the more accurately it will reflect your life and your needs.
The most practical first step is to gather any recent reports and documentation you already have. This might include allied health reports from occupational therapists, speech pathologists, psychologists, or other practitioners, as well as any relevant medical history or specialist letters. If these documents are available before the assessment, your assessor can review them in advance and use that time to focus on the areas that matter most, rather than starting from scratch.
It is also worth spending some time thinking about your goals and aspirations before the assessment takes place. The I-CAN is designed to map a pathway toward what a participant wants their life to look like, not only to document support needs. Coming to the assessment with a sense of what you want to work toward gives the assessor something meaningful to build the planning conversation around.
Think carefully about who you would like to bring with you. A family member, support coordinator, or trusted support worker who knows the participant well can add important context that the participant themselves may find difficult to articulate in a formal setting. Their presence is not just permitted: it is genuinely encouraged as part of the process. If there are any topics the participant would prefer to discuss privately, without others in the room, that option is available and the assessor will respect it.
At The Inclusive Movement, our Person Centred, Strengths-Based and Neuroaffirming Approach means we always begin where the participant is, not where a form tells us to start. If you would like support preparing for your I-CAN Assessment, or if you have questions about what the process involves for your specific situation, we welcome you to get in touch with our team.
Frequently Asked Questions About the I-CAN Assessment
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The I-CAN Assessment (Instrument for the Classification and Assessment of Support Needs) is the NDIS's preferred tool for understanding how much support a person with disability needs across twelve areas of everyday life. It focuses on what a person can achieve with the right supports in place, rather than cataloguing what they cannot do independently.
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A Functional Capacity Assessment documents what a person can and cannot do in specific functional areas, typically completed by a single allied health practitioner. The I-CAN takes a broader, collaborative approach, drawing on input from the participant, their family and support network, and existing reports across twelve life domains. It also generates goals and can recommend further assessments where needed.
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I-CAN assessments must be conducted by a trained assessor with an eligible tertiary qualification. Eligible professions include occupational therapists, speech pathologists, social workers, psychologists, physiotherapists, developmental educators, registered nurses, and several other allied health and clinical professions. All assessors must have completed the official I-CAN assessor training programme, which was only open for a very short enrolment window. As a result, very few practitioners in Australia currently hold this qualification.
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This is currently unclear, and it is one of the concerns raised by disability advocates. The NDIS has indicated the assessment process will primarily be managed internally, which suggests most participants will not have choice over who conducts their assessment. We will update this article as more information becomes available.
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An I-CAN Assessment typically takes around three hours, though this varies depending on the individual's needs and how many domains are relevant to their life. The process is flexible: participants can take breaks, skip sections that do not apply, and choose to answer more personal questions privately if they prefer.
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The NDIS is moving toward using the I-CAN as its standard support needs assessment tool, with the potential that it replaces the need for multiple separate Functional Capacity Assessments. The shift is being introduced gradually from mid-2026, and some participants with more complex needs may still require additional assessments. How costs will be structured under the new model is still being confirmed. For the most current guidance on your specific situation, speak with your NDIS planner or support coordinator.
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The I-CAN Assessment is expected to roll out progressively through 2026. If you have an upcoming NDIS plan review, it is worth asking your planner whether the I-CAN will be used and whether an assessor has already been allocated. Gathering your existing reports and medical information in advance means you will be ready when the time comes.
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Navigating the NDIS can feel like a lot, particularly when the system is changing and the information available is still catching up. If you are trying to understand what the I-CAN Assessment means for your family, or if you are preparing for an upcoming plan review, you do not have to figure it out alone. Our post on You Don't Have to Navigate the NDIS Alone is a good place to start if you are feeling overwhelmed by where to begin.
At The Inclusive Movement, our practitioners have completed I-CAN assessor training and are actively working with participants and families through the assessment process. We also hold our concerns about how this tool will be used by the NDIS, and we think it is important to be honest about that rather than present the change as straightforwardly positive.
Our approach is grounded in genuine partnership with the people we work with. We believe that a good assessment is not something that happens to a participant: it is something that is built with them, in a way that respects their voice, their goals, and their right to live the life they choose. We will continue to use the I-CAN as one tool among many to advocate clearly for our clients' full support needs.
If you would like to learn more about accessing an I-CAN Assessment through The Inclusive Movement, or if you have questions about what the process would look like for your family, we warmly invite you to get in touch with our team.
