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KindPath Collective Inc

Independence and Informed Choice Policy

Version 1.0 | Effective: 29 August 2026 | Review: 29 August 2027 | Owner: Director

1. Purpose

To ensure KindPath’s supports build a participant’s independence and real decision-making power, rather than creating dependence on a particular worker or on KindPath itself.

2. Scope

All KindPath staff, contractors, volunteers and family-member workers.

3. Legislative and standards basis

  • NDIS Practice Standards, Module 1: Rights and Responsibilities — Independence and informed choice.
  • NDIS Act 2013 (Cth), s.4 principles (choice and control).
  • UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, Article 12 (equal recognition before the law) and Article 19 (living independently).

4. Policy statement

Supports are designed, wherever possible, to build a participant’s own capability and natural supports (family, friends, community, other services) — not to make the participant reliant on one KindPath worker who becomes irreplaceable. This matters in a small organisation like KindPath, where a single worker (sometimes a family member of the Director) may be a participant’s main point of contact; the risk of over-reliance and blurred boundaries is real and is treated as a design problem to actively manage, not an inevitable side effect of small-team delivery.

Informed choice means a participant is given real information — including costs, alternatives, and honest limitations of what KindPath can offer — before agreeing to a support, not a single option presented as the only one.

5. Procedures

  1. Every support plan documents what the participant can do independently now, what they’re building toward, and how KindPath’s support is meant to reduce over time or transition to natural/community supports where that is the participant’s goal.
  2. Where a participant is offered a choice (of worker, of activity, of provider), the choice is presented with enough plain information to be meaningful — not just “yes or no” to what’s already been decided.
  3. KindPath does not present itself as a participant’s only viable option where alternatives genuinely exist, and will say so, including pointing a participant to their support coordinator or the NDIS Provider Finder if appropriate.
  4. Where a worker notices a participant becoming unusually dependent on them personally (contact outside agreed hours, distress at any change of worker, requests that go beyond the support agreement), this is raised with the Director as a practice issue to be actively managed — see also the Sexual Harassment and Bullying Prevention Policy and Safe Environment Policy for the boundary-setting side of this.

6. Roles and responsibilities

  • Director: actively monitors for over-reliance in a small-team delivery model and adjusts support design accordingly.
  • Workers: build independence into everyday support delivery, and flag dependence risks early rather than letting them normalise.

7. Related documents

Person-Centred Supports Policy · Support Planning and Service Agreements Policy · Sexual Harassment and Bullying Prevention Policy · Human Resource Management Policy

8. Review

Annually.