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NDIS participant? Sureway can help you find your way

With localised knowledge and a can-do attitude, Sureway Murray Bridge is here to help you navigate the NDIS system and get the most out of your plan.

Viki Ntafillis

Nov 3, 2022 — 4 min read

This sponsored post is brought to you by Sureway.

Brad Krebbekx is here to help you figure out the best way to spend your NDIS funds to help you achieve your goals. Photo: Viki Ntafillis.

Anyone that has received an NDIS package would know it’s not the easiest system to navigate.

Fortunately, a local service can provide advice on how to best spend your NDIS funding.

Sureway is a local NDIS-registered organisation that has been operating in Murray Bridge for seven years, and this year opened up a new branch: Sureway Health.

Along with their employment and training services, Sureway now also provides support coordination and recovery coaching for those whose NDIS funding includes it.

Support coordinator and recovery coach Brad Krebbekx said the service was about building participants’ capacity.

“We ask the participants, ‘what are your goals?’, so we can identify the supports they will likely require and determine what pathway that will suit you best.

“So instead of me just saying to participants ‘this is what we’re going to do’, I lay out all the options to enable full choice and control over their support needs.

“Then I teach the participants how to do this themselves: how they can coordinate their own support workers, or how they can coordinate their own home supports.”

Experience with the NDIS

Mr Krebbekx has had his own experiences with the NDIS system over the years, both personally and professionally.

Based on his personal experience, he said NDIS participants would greatly benefit from visiting Sureway to have someone show them how to make the most of their plans.

“When it comes to the NDIS, you don’t know what you don’t know, so a lot of people under-utilise their plans,” he said.

“There is no magic portal on the NDIS website where you can just ‘add to shopping cart’; you have to go through all the different guidelines, contracts, deeds and pricing guides.

“When I first went onto the NDIS with my eldest, we didn’t know what we could claim.

“Then our first review came around, and the NDIS planner said we didn’t use much funding so they cut the plan in half … to get that funding back, we had to go through a plan review which took another six months.

“So I have a lot of knowledge about the system, both lived and learnt.”

Sureway can help you find local NDIS support

When helping NDIS participants find support, Mr Krebbekx said it paid to be a local.

“People here were being referred to support coordinators from Adelaide because there wasn’t the capacity in Murray Bridge, but the coordinators didn’t know the local area … they had to do all that research into finding what was actually around,” he said.

“I’ve lived in Murray Bridge going on 15 years now, I’ve raised my three kids here, and working with the disability employment services, we network a lot.

Having lived in Murray Bridge for 15 years, Brad Krebbekx knows about all the best supports, services and programs around town. Photo: Viki Ntafillis.

“Sureway has a collaborative approach – we get in contact with all the local providers and services and bring all the information together to show participants what is available to them.

“One of the reasons I decided to take on this role is because there is a need for it.

“We want to support local … we want to put you in contact with the community.”

Sureway can help people achieve a ‘normal’ life

Mr Krebbekx said Sureway’s services were all about improving clients’ quality of life.

“As a person with a disability, if I didn’t have the NDIS I would be very upset daily … I’d just be saying ‘I wish that I could have that normal life’,” he said.

“A lot of people are like ‘you don’t want a normal life, you want an extraordinary life’ … and I’m just like ‘no, I’m just happy with the normal life, because I haven’t had it for so long’.

“Having all those supports in place, and understanding what I could and couldn’t do, (has helped me) to reach that.

“It’s about showing participants all the options that are at their fingertips, and asking ‘which way would you like to go?’”

More information: Visit Sureway at 8-12 Bridge Street, Murray Bridge or sureway.com.au, or call 1300 787 392.

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