— Definition
What is Capacity Building in an NDIS plan?
Capacity Building is one of the three budgets in an NDIS plan, alongside Core and Capital. It funds supports that build your skills and independence — therapy, employment support, improved daily living, and support coordination itself. Unlike Core, Capacity Building funding is allocated to specific categories and generally cannot be moved between them.
The Care Coordinators · Updated 15 September 2026
The three budgets, briefly
- Core — everyday assistance: support workers, consumables, transport, community access. Usually flexible between its categories.
- Capacity Building — building skill and independence: therapy, employment support, improved daily living, support coordination. Locked to categories.
- Capital — assistive technology, equipment and home modifications. Quoted and approved item by item.
What Capacity Building pays for
- Support coordination — Support Connection, Coordination of Supports, Specialist Support Coordination
- Psychosocial recovery coaching
- Therapy: occupational therapy, physiotherapy, speech pathology, psychology, dietetics
- Improved daily living: skills for cooking, budgeting, travel, self-care
- Finding and keeping a job
- Improved relationships, including behaviour support
- Improved living arrangements — help to find and keep housing
Why the category lock matters
Because a plan can look well funded and still be unusable. If your improved-daily-living category is generous but your coordination category is nearly empty, you cannot shift money across — the categories are separate. Working out early whether the split matches your actual life is one of the most useful things a coordinator does in the first month.
How to find it in your plan
Open your plan and look for the Capacity Building heading. Under it you will see named categories with dollar amounts. Support coordination appears there as "Support Connection", "Coordination of Supports" or "Specialist Support Coordination" — see the three levels for what each one means.
Unspent Capacity Building funding does not carry over, and an underspend can be read as evidence the support was not needed. If a category is going unused, raise it well before your review — not at it.
Capacity Building questions
What is Capacity Building in an NDIS plan?
Capacity Building is one of the three budgets in an NDIS plan. It funds supports that build your skills and independence — therapy, employment support, improved daily living, and support coordination itself. Unlike Core, Capacity Building funding is usually locked to specific categories and cannot be moved freely between them.
What is the difference between Core and Capacity Building?
Core funds the everyday assistance you need right now — support workers, consumables, transport, community access — and is generally flexible between its categories. Capacity Building funds supports that build skill and independence over time, and is allocated to specific categories that cannot be reshuffled.
Is support coordination Core or Capacity Building?
Capacity Building. Support Connection, Coordination of Supports and Specialist Support Coordination all sit under Capacity Building, which is why coordination is described as building your ability to manage your own supports rather than simply delivering them.
Can I move money between Capacity Building categories?
Generally no. Capacity Building is allocated by category — improved daily living, improved relationships, finding and keeping a job, and so on — and funding sits where it was allocated. If a category is wrong for your situation, that is a plan review or variation conversation.
What happens to unspent Capacity Building funding?
It does not carry over. Unspent funding returns to the NDIA at the end of the plan, and an underspend can be read as evidence that you did not need the support — which is why an unspent budget is worth raising early rather than at the review.
Want someone to read the budget lines with you?
Send us the plan — we will tell you what each category actually funds.