Welcome to Sanity Care’s Individualised Living Options (ILO) service! Our ILOs are designed to provide flexible and tailored living arrangements to suit your unique needs and preferences. At Sanity Care, we understand that everyone is different, so our ILOs allow you to choose how, where, and with whom you live. Our dedicated team works closely with you to create a living solution that fosters independence and supports your goals.
Individualised Living Options (ILO)
Individualised Living Options (ILO)
With our Individualised Living Options, you can design your ideal living situation. Whether you prefer to live alone, with family, or in a shared arrangement, Sanity Care ensures that you receive the proper support in a setting that feels like home. Our ILOs empower you to live on your terms with the assistance you need to thrive. We are committed to providing a safe and supportive environment where you can grow and achieve your potential. At Sanity Care, the best living arrangements reflect your individuality. Our Individualised Living Options are designed to adapt to your changing needs and preferences, offering a personalized and dynamic living experience. We work alongside you and your support network to assess and adjust your living arrangement, ensuring it remains aligned with your lifestyle and goals. Experience the freedom and flexibility of ILOs with Sanity Care.
About our ILO services include
If your home and living goals include exploring an individualised living option, then ILO might be right for you! At Sanity Care, our ILO services includes working with you, your family, and friends to explore and design different options for how you live, where you live, and who you live with.
This can mean sharing your home with housemates, living in the home of a host family, or on your own with a variety of individualized supports.
How does Sanity Care help you with individualized Living Options?
Get to know you and understand your hopes, needs and vision for your new home
Assist you, your family, and your support team to identify all of your options
Benefits of Individualised Living Options.
The two stages of NDIS Individualised Living Options.
Stage 1: Exploration and design.
This stage is all about determining which supports are suitable for you and the steps needed to provide them. It’s called “Individualised Living Options – Exploration and Design” in the NDIS Price Guide. Price limits apply.
The exploration and design stage covers:
- Exploring your vision for your future home and the options you have
- Assistance to locate suitable housing or link you with other funded, community or mainstream services
- Working out who to live with and what support you need
- Determining who you want to provide that support
- Assess any risks and consider safety and security.
To complete this stage, you can get help from a family member, friend, peer, support coordinator, or capacity building organisation. Stage 1 must be completed before Stage 2 can be added to your plan.
At the end of this process, your provider will create a “Service Proposal” that tells the NDIS how you want to live, who will support you (paid and unpaid) and how much paid supports will cost. The NDIS will then determine how much support you need.
Stage 2: Putting your supports in place.
If the NDIS considers ILO reasonable and necessary for your needs, the funding will be included under “Individualised Living Options – Support model” in your NDIS Plan.
Your plan will include two different types of ILO supports:
- Primary supports such as personal care, cooking, cleaning and getting ready for work
- Supplementary (additional) supports that can be used flexibly. For example, “drop-in” support or unpaid help from a neighbor or volunteer.
Once the funding for Stage 2 is included in your plan, you can start to pay for the supports mentioned in your Service Proposal straight away.
ILO funding includes resources to monitor whether ILO supports work for you and redesign if your support needs change. A review is not usually required to make changes.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
These arrangements mirror how many Australians live. They allow you to work out a system of supports that is right for you, rather than have to ‘fit in’ to an existing model. Those involved in ILO arrangements say positive relationships are at the heart of them. They talk about how life is better through the connection, participation, and a mutual sharing of lives these living arrangements can create. They say things like “it’s not a job, it’s more a way of life.” People with disabilities and families say things like “I didn’t want to only have paid staff in my life”. ILOs don’t mean that a person suddenly needs less support. They are about creating different supportive relationships than paid staff working a roster of care. For some people, an ILO can be the first step they take away from their family home.
- Some of the questions in Summer Foundation’s My Housing Preferences resource can help you to start planning
- WA’s Individualised Services has a great ILO planning booklet called My Life, Your Life, Our Life
- The Good Life website Community Resource Unit Belonging Matters
- RCesearch papers and manuals can be found here There are good examples in this report
- The ILO Toolkit
One of the most common ways is by reducing the rent of a co-resident because they agree to provide some support.
Another way is by a reimbursement (or being paid back). Host couples or families are generally reimbursed to cover the daily support needs and living requirements for the person with disability.
Some examples of support are:
- Shopping and cooking
- Domestic chores like mowing the lawn
- Taking care of the home
- Being immediately available overnight (also called passive overnight support)
- Companionship
It is very important that these payments are organised legally, including any tax issues. It is important to look for this expertise. A provider would be expected to organise this. If you are self managing, it is also important to get legal and financial advice.
ILO funding can’t pay for an NDIS Participant’s rent or mortgage. ILO is about the support to live in a home. While some Participants move into someone else’s home (called a Host arrangement), ILO funding doesn’t pay the rent. It still funds the support the Host provides.
The NDIS has said that ILOs may be suitable for NDIS participants who:
- are 18 or over, or 17 and thinking about your future living arrangement
- need help at home (from paid or unpaid supports) for at least 6 hours each day
- are ready to explore their home and living needs, what they’d like, and are ready to look into potential options
- are willing to invest time and effort towards creating their future home
They also say that “people who know you well can be an important part of helping to explore options and to make decisions. You can involve them in helping to design and manage your ILO, if you want to.”
The NDIS has said that ILO may not be suitable for NDIS Participants who:
- are under 18, unless they’re 17 and thinking about their future living arrangement
- need less than 6 hours of help at home each day, and don’t need help with problem solving at other times
- need 24-hour rostered support from one or more support workers
- need frequent support overnight
- restrictive practice is part of their behaviour support plan, if they have one.