How to be a better OT

How to do a Functional Capacity Assessment

• Clare Batkin - Your OT Tutor • Season 1 • Episode 2

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Does writing a Functional Capacity Assessment (FCA) for the NDIS feel daunting? Or are your OT reports constantly getting knocked back for "not enough evidence"?

Episode Summary: In this episode of the How to Be a Better OT podcast, host Clare Batkin breaks down one of the most common (and complex) services provided by occupational therapists working within the NDIS: the Functional Capacity Assessment. Clare shares her 3-stage framework (Preparation, Assessment, and Report Writing) to help you gather the right information, choose the best standardised assessments, and write reports that clearly align with NDIS "Reasonable and Necessary" criteria.

 

Key Takeaways:

  • The Preparation Phase: Learn why you should never "wing" an initial assessment and how to use OT models (like the PEO) to prep your interview guide.
  • The Assessment Phase: Discover the crucial components of your information gathering including clinical interviews, functional observations, home environment checks, standardised assessments and liaison with others.
  • Writing the Report: How to translate your findings into plain language for NDIS planners, format for maximum readability, and include the right level of detail.
  • The Follow-Up: Why your job isn't done when you hit "submit," and how tracking the outcomes of your reports builds your clinical reasoning and confidence, and improves outcomes for your clients.

 

Links & Resources Mentioned:

 

If you found this breakdown of the FCA process helpful, please subscribe, leave a review, and share this episode with your colleagues! 

And be sure to tune in next time when we cover our next core skill: how to provide effective client education.


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Now, even when funding is tight, try not to cut corners in this assessment phase. Out of the many report reviews I do each year, often the most common issue isn't the report writing, it's how big the gaps are in the clinician's information gathering. Big gaps in data cause big gaps in clinical reasoning, and then your report writing's going to struggle as a result Welcome to the How to Be a Better OT podcast. I'm Claire Batkin, an OT and clinical educator who is on a mission to make professional development simple, practical, and worth it for OTs. If you're ready to step back from the overwhelm and bring core frameworks to life, join me for step-by-step guides and practical solutions that will build your confidence and competence so you can deliver the best outcomes for your clients and truly love what you do. Welcome back to the How to Be a Better OT podcast. Today, we're tackling one of the most common and sometimes the most daunting services provided by occupational therapists working within the NDIS, the Functional Capacity Assessment, or FCA. Now, for those OTs listening who are not based in Australia, the NDIS is the National Disability Insurance Scheme, which is a government-funded scheme that provides supports and services to people living with disability. An NDIS functional capacity assessment is not the same as an occ rehab or medico-legal style functional capacity evaluation, so I'll just be clear about that upfront, but there will be some overlapping features. Basically, an FCA is a thorough OT assessment that evaluates a person's level of function across all aspects of their life. From there, we make recommendations for what supports would be helpful to improve their safety, their function, or their participation. Now, within the NDIS space, these recommendations must be based on the NDIS guidelines of what is reasonable and necessary. Now, that is a massive topic all on its own, so I'm just going to drop a link to my Navigating the NDIS course in the show notes, which goes through some of these NDIS 101 type topics. If you're completely new to this space, it's something I'd suggest you check out. Now, just a quick disclaimer before we dive in. The NDIA would like to phase FCAs out and replace them with an alternative form of assessment called a support needs assessment. But at the time of recording this in June 2026, there's still no real definite plan about this, so for now it is business as usual. But even if they are eventually phased out, there is still huge benefit to listening today because we're going to go through a core OT process that could really apply to any setting where you need to assess function and make recommendations. Now, just another disclaimer. Normally, when I teach people how to do an FCA, it requires a lot more depth. So my epic online course, The OT Guide to Completing a Functional Capacity Assessment, actually has about six hours of videos, and then I always recommend you team that up with some report reviews and supervision to make sure that you're actually applying the course content appropriately to your caseload. But today I'm going to attempt to give you the thirty minute overview, so it'll hopefully be a good starting point if you're new to FCAs, or it might just give you some things to reflect on if you've already been doing them for a long time. Now, we're going to split this up into three distinct stages: the preparation phase, the assessment phase, and the report writing phase. And hot tip, if you're listening along but would also like some sort of visual to refer back to, you can actually download a free flowchart that outlines this exact process directly from my learning library. Now, if you don't know what my learning library is, check out the show notes, but it's basically something you can sign up to once, and then you can access over one hundred free resources on a range of different topics all in the one place. So let's get into it. Phase one is the preparation phase. Now, I've never come across an NDIS participant whose needs are simple or straightforward, so please don't just turn up to an initial assessment for your FCA planning on winging it, especially if you're a new clinician. So yes, it's quite common to get very limited information on a referral form, but this doesn't mean that we shouldn't try to find out more before we go and meet the person for the first time. So if you get poor referral information and you don't chase it up, these are the consequences. So you might accidentally step beyond your clinical scope and take on a referral for a report that's beyond your ability to deliver. You might face safety concerns because you're going to an unknown residence with unknown people, or you might completely fail to meet the client's expectations because they were actually wanting something different to an FCA. I would always push for a minimum amount of information before you start that initial visit. So where possible, I'd suggest finding out what their officially recognized NDIS diagnosis is, and I admit this can be easier said than done. You also want to find out are there any important contacts or support people who should be involved? Are there any safety risks, especially if the person has a positive behavior support plan? And also how they like to communicate, or if they have any limitations such as pain or fatigue that may impact the types or the amount of activities that you try to get through during that first face-to-face assessment. Before the meeting, also try to determine the exact purpose of the FCA. So is this a standard FCA for a scheduled plan review, or has something big changed and they're going for a change of circumstance? Or are they not actually a participant yet and they're wanting this FCA to access the NDIS? The purpose will influence the entire focus of your report. So if it's a change of circumstance, you need to be able to objectively describe what has changed in a measurable way. If it's an access request, then we focus more heavily on the eligibility criteria rather than producing an extensive list of recommendations against the NDIS price guide. Another tip to help you prep for an FCA, especially if you're an early career clinician, is to go back to using an OT model that could help you map out what functional difficulties the client is likely to experience, and then you can use that to map out a list of questions that you might like to ask in the interview or what sort of topics you might need to cover Probably the easiest way to explain this is with an example. So I'll keep it simple and just use the PEO as the chosen model. So say we have a new referral to see Bob, who is a fifty-eight-year-old man with multiple sclerosis. We can start with the P, the person factors, and write a list of symptoms, impairments, or functional issues that are commonly associated with MS and make sure that these are in our interview guide. So things like fatigue, spasticity, cognition. We also think about the prognosis, so that even if we get there and mobility isn't hugely affected just now, We know that MS is commonly progressive, so mobility could be challenging, so we need to keep that in mind when we're looking at the E factors or the environment factors. We'd like to see what his access and bathroom is like within the home because these are areas that are going to become a challenge when mobility is impacted. We also know that MS can have a big impact on family members, but that supportive family members can be big enablers for people with MS. So we'll want to ask about those social supports as part of the other E factors using that PEO model. And then for occupation factors, it's thinking about how much do I know about Bob's function based on the referral, and see if you can plan some activities that you might be able to observe where possible so that your assessment isn't based on interview alone. So we'll go into this in more detail in the next section when we're talking about the assessment phase. Now, of course, you could do this plan and then get there and still something unexpected comes up. But by asking more questions from the referrer and spending a little bit more time to actually map out a likely presentation for that first visit, you will go into it feeling much more prepared and better able to pivot and cope if there are some unexpected things that come up. And then one last thing for the prep phase, I've spoken about doing more prep so that you know what to expect, but also make sure that your client knows what to expect too. So tell them that they'll need to be home, that you'll want to observe them doing some activities and not just talk, and that you might need to do some standardised assessments, and also how long it typically takes. So they might be expecting a quick chat, and it's all over in half an hour, whereas your normal process is two to three hours for each person. And then just an extra special note on this, if your client does have an invisible illness like myalgic encephalomyelitis or a chronic fatigue syndrome, you may need to completely alter your autopilot approach to how you conduct your initial FCA appointment. So if you typically spend two to three hours with the client and get them to run through interview questions, functional activities, and some standardised assessments, this is not going to work for someone with significant levels of fatigue or neurological exhaustion. You need to know this going in so that you can change your approach, such as maybe booking two shorter face-to-face sessions or sending some of those standardised assessments via email instead, especially if written communication is their preference. And just as a side note, if you do work with people with ME or CFS or other similar invisible illnesses, there is a free guide and a conference-style presentation within my free learning library, and that goes deeper into how to make some of these considerations and adaptations as part of the assessment process. Okay, and this is now probably a good time to start to go deeper into phase two, which is the assessment phase. So for those who went into the library and found my flowchart, I suggest that this generally involves an interview, a home assessment, functional observations, and standardised assessments. Now, we'll go through each of these one by one to give you a little bit more of an introduction. First up is the interview. So when you first start chatting, you need to clarify what the person's medical history is, specifically asking what their officially NDIS recognized diagnoses are. Now, as I said at the start, this is actually easier said than done for many participants, but it's crucial information as your recommendations need to link back to the functional issues caused by that specific condition. You also want to dig deeper into their social history. So ask who they live with and what are the commitments that these people have. Now, you might be thinking, "Why does that matter?" Um, the NDIS factors this into their reasonable and necessary criteria. So again, if I give you an example, if your client wants a support worker to do all the household cleaning and laundry because they can't do it due to their disability, but they live with three other capable adults, the NDIS is likely to say no. It's reasonable to expect that the other adults in the home should also be sharing those duties. But what they might do is that they might see that it's reasonable to fund what would be the participant's contribution to that household. You also want to ask about their typical daily and weekly routine, and actually map that out if you can, including how many hours of support they receive each day. So this will make it much easier when it comes to working out your recommendations. If you ask about what parts of their routine they find challenging, what extra supports they feel they need, as well as what supports they've already tried, and any barriers that may have impacted how useful those supports were. Always try to contact their informal supports for a bit of collateral history as well, if you can, with consent from the client, of course. Um, and you might very likely find some inconsistencies. It doesn't mean that anyone is purposely lying, but getting the details right is really important. And this is exactly why the next step is a non-negotiable That next step is functional observations. Now, while I'm saying start your assessment with an interview, you can't base your entire report on only what the participant tells you. If a case ever goes to the AAT, the Administrative Appeals Tribunal, a lawyer is gonna look at your report, and the lawyers will always zero in on what you as the expert clinician actually observed. So since you can't observe their entire day, focus on activities that they find difficult, where they rely on assistance, where there's a clear risk, and most importantly, the tasks that you'll be asking for funded supports for from the NDIS. So let's say that the client mentions his wife has to physically pull him off the toilet. This is a massive red flag for falls and manual handling injuries. So don't just write that down and then blindly recommend an over-toilet aid. Actually get them to show you. When you observe it, you might realize that an over-toilet aid won't actually solve the problem, and maybe a grab rail and a change of technique is the better option. A pro tip here is to naturally build your observations into your interview. So ask them to carry on their normal routine and make themselves a cup of tea or a snack if that's something they'd normally do during that time of your visit. In that one simple task, you can observe their functional mobility, their cognitive skills during that multitasking, and also how fatigued they get by the end of it. It'll also feel a lot more natural to them rather than them feeling like you're testing them by getting them to do it as a standalone assessment. When you actually write this up, the NDIS wants the specific details, so you need to note things like how fast someone actually walked, how long did things take, so the timeframes involved, and what type of help they received, as well as any of the risks that you observed. And this can be really helpful to take some photos or videos. It's hard to upload and share videos with the NDIS, but photos definitely can be included in your report. You probably won't be able to observe all of the important tasks in that first face-to-face visit, whether it's in-person or telehealth, but often it becomes a priority for any follow-up visit. So if you're not really sure what you're looking for when you're observing functional activities, there are some webinars in my Connector membership that might help. So there's one on how to do a functional mobility assessment looking at transfers, and another one on how to do a functional cognitive assessment, which can be really handy when you're trying to gather evidence about the functional impact of somebody's cognitive impairments. Next, we'll move on to the home environment assessment. Now, this is an absolute must if your client has physical impairments, but it's-- can still also provide valuable information for people with psychosocial conditions as well. So usually we'll do a walk through the entire home, but focusing on the areas that the person currently uses or that they'd like to use. So this includes the access into and within the home, the bathroom setup, the lounge room, kitchen, bedroom, and even laundry and outdoor spaces if it's relevant for that client. Also be mindful of the type of flooring and the circulation space and even how hot or cold it is, and this information can be really important if your client uses a mobility aid or if they have any difficulties with thermoregulation If the person gives permission, take some photos, and you may even need to take some measurements, but don't waste time mapping out the whole house for the purpose of an FCA. Save that detail if you need to do a home mods or an AT application. Now, if you need some help with doing a home assessment, I am planning to cover it in a future podcast episode, so hang out for that. But otherwise, you can access an on-demand tutorial and a clinical reasoning guide on this topic within the Connector and Alliance memberships Now, just quickly, when it comes to people with psychosocial conditions, you may think the layout of their environment really isn't that relevant if they don't have physical impairments. But a quick tour of the house can actually reveal some really insightful information about someone's executive functioning, their sensory preferences, and just how well they're coping with their daily activities and demands. So for example, if you're seeing a laundry that's overflowing with piles of unwashed clothes and the layer of dust on the washing machine suggests that it hasn't been used for a while, this will prompt you to dig a little bit deeper into the person's planning, organization, and initiation of domestic tasks, even if the client tells you that they're doing fine with these tasks. Now, one special tip that I would highly suggest you start with before you start your tour and forget about it is to ask the client, "How long do you intend to stay in this home?" Now, if they're planning to sell and move in the next six months, you need to give them some serious advice. So the NDIS expects participants to consider their disability needs when they're choosing a new home. If they moved into an inaccessible house and then immediately ask the NDIS for a major bathroom modification or a ramp, the NDIS is going to deny it. So you need to catch this in your home assessment, and it can actually save a lot of future heartache. Finally, let's talk about standardised assessments. Now, the NDIS do seem to like numbers, and many planners will specifically request certain assessments. The NDIA also have a preferred list of assessment tools that they expect to see for certain conditions, especially when they're judging eligibility to join the scheme. So something definitely to keep in mind if you're doing an FCA for someone who's trying to join the NDIS. These can be your starting point, but not your definitive list. So in some cases, the assessments listed won't actually be appropriate for your client or for the OT role. So then you can choose to draw on other assessments to inform your reasoning, but just be really purposeful about your choices. So first of all, how many should you include? I'd say the average that I see is about maybe two to four, and I do lots of report reviews from lots of different OTs, but there are OTs out there who choose not to include any, and some who potentially get a little bit carried away and include in excess of five. Now, the most important thing to remember is to only include assessments that will actually add value. They need to measure function and participation, not just symptom severity. Using validated tools with established cutoff scores can be helpful as a way to justify your funding recommendations. So for example, I like using the Caregiver Burden Inventory when evaluating carer burnout risks, as it gives a cutoff score for when a carer is at risk of burnout, which can then strengthen the evidence behind requesting additional supports to help sustain the informal support network. If there are tools that compare to norms, such as a Community Integration Questionnaire Revised, these can also be really helpful for highlighting how your client's social and participation opportunities might compare to their peers. Now, the warning is that these type of assessment tools can look a bit intimidating, with standard deviations and lots of different numbers, but investing in a quick mentoring session with a supervisor who knows the tool could really help with that. Now, I know you're probably thinking, "But which one should I use?" So I'll share some of my go-to ones, but the disclaimer is that my area of clinical expertise is adults with physical impairments. So these are just some examples that are probably going to be more relevant for those situations, and they in no way constitute an exhaustive list that you have to choose from. So some of my suggestions are the WHODAS two point O. Now, this is an appropriate assessment for all participants, but remember, it only measures the person's subjective perspective. So it can be a really valuable tool to understand what tasks the person finds challenging, but their perspective alone will not be strong enough evidence to fund supports. So we need to combine these results with our observations and the results of any objective measures that we complete. Now, there is a quick video in my learning library and on my YouTube channel that answers some FAQs about the WHODAS scoring, so go and check that out. Plus, again, a full webinar in the Connector and Alliance memberships on the WHODAS. The LSP16 or the Life Skills Profile, this is another NDIS preferred tool for people with psychosocial disability arising from mental health conditions. Um, the Care and Need Scale or the CANS, this is brilliant for traumatic brain injury because it translates function directly into recommended support hours. But you need to avoid using it for other conditions because it hasn't actually been validated outside of that population. The modified Barthel Index is great for physical impairments that impact at that basic self-care level. And again, there's a short video in the learning library that shows you where you can find a handy online calculator that will save you a bit of time, and again, there's a whole tutorial in the paid membership. Now, this is often used as an alternative to the FIM or the Functional Independence Measure. So if you're not FIM trained, this would be something I would suggest you look into. But we do usually choose one of these tools and not both in the same report because they do overlap quite a bit. The Lawton IADL scale or the CIQR, which is a Community Integration Questionnaire Revised. These can be really helpful if your client's having more functional participation difficulties at the domestic task or community participation level. And then finally, I'm not a pedes OT, but for the pediatric OTs out there listening, the NDIS preferred tools are usually the Pedicat or the Vineland, um, but many clinicians have different choices that they prefer to use in different situations. So maybe jump into some of those Facebook groups and find out what other paeds OTs are using. Now, I could spend more than a full podcast episode just talking about standardised assessments in FCAs, and I actually do include a very detailed breakdown in my longer FCA course, The OT Guide to Completing an FCA, or you can buy it as a standalone mini course as well. But here are the key things that I'd like you to remember. So number one, start with the NDIS preferred list, but then only go on to use some of those assessment tools if it's going to add value related to the supports that you're requesting. It needs to be a tool that's valid to use with that type of client, and you need to make sure that you're trained in how to administer it if training is needed, and make sure that you know how to interpret it. So you can't just do an assessment and then dump numbers into a report. I'm gonna talk a little bit more about that when we get to the report writing section. And now for the final piece of the information gathering assessment phase, liaison with others. Now, your information gathering should also commonly involve talking with other people, maybe not necessarily on your first visit, but at some stage before you finalise your report. So you may need to speak with family members or support workers or read reports written by other allied health clinicians working with your client. If you take this comprehensive approach to your information gathering and incorporate a variety of sources through your interview, your observations, home assessment, and standardised tools, you're going to have a really strong foundation to start to build your evidence. Now, even when funding is tight, try not to cut corners in this assessment phase. Out of the many report reviews I do each year, often the most common issue isn't the report writing, it's how big the gaps are in the clinician's information gathering. Big gaps in data cause big gaps in clinical reasoning, and then your report writing's going to struggle as a result. But remember, it's really rare to get all of this information gathering done in one visit, so follow-up sessions, telehealth calls, or liaising with other allied health providers are totally normal and expected parts of that thorough assessment phase. Now we're up to the bit that most OTs either love or hate, phase three, the report writing, and this is where we pull it all together. Now, before we dive into my top report writing tips, you need to be really clear on what your recommendations are likely to be, and this needs to be a collaborative process with your client and the rest of their team when relevant. Now, I'm not saying that we need to write a wish list of the supports based on what our client wants or currently has, or what the support coordinator thinks is a good idea, but we need to hear and consider their opinions as part of the process of coming up with recommendations that we can then stand by based on our own clinical reasoning and the strength of the evidence that we're able to gather. The recommendations shouldn't come as a surprise to them, so make sure that this discussion is built into your process. Sometimes this discussion will reveal that you've actually interpreted information incorrectly or you've misunderstood their wishes, so be open to hearing this feedback. Sometimes it will also reveal that we've made some assumptions that won't end up being the best option for that person. So a perfect example is someone who needs support with meal preparation. We may assume that they'll want support worker help for this and we ask for extra hours. But maybe what they really wanted is to have pre-prepared meals funded so that they can maintain more independence. Or maybe they wanted to have some OT capacity building hours built into the plan to try and build their independence. You won't know which support is the right support to request unless you know your client's wishes and use that along with your own clinical reasoning. When drafting out your recommendations, you need to make sure that you're as specific as possible. So don't just say they need 20 hours of support worker help per week. Break down those hours into how they're going to be utilized and for what activities. So sometimes mapping it out into a weekly schedule can be really helpful for the NDIA planner, but also for you and the client to do that check about whether the amount you're asking for is actually feasible, or whether maybe you've been a little bit too cautious or ambitious and asked for extra funding just in case, only to see that there's not actually enough hours in the day for them to use that amount of funding. Now, the final thing that I wanted to comment on in terms of recommendations is that we need to be aware of the reasonable and necessary criteria. Now, while it's not our job to be the gatekeeper about what meets this criteria, that's the NDIA planner's job, we need to make sure that there's enough detail in the report explaining our recommendations for the planner to make this judgment. But the good news is that many of the reasonable and necessary criteria correlate with good OT practice. So for example, two of the criteria are that the support should be effective and beneficial and value for money. Now, this is something OT should have in mind regardless of the funding scheme that we're working within. We should be confident that we're recommending supports that will work based on things like research evidence or even objective data that we've tracked from the person's individual progress in a therapy program. We should also be thinking about whether a support is value for money. Now, cost is often an important factor, whether the scheme is paying or the client is paying directly, so you always need to start with the lowest cost option that will work before you jump to the flashiest, most expensive item just because the NDIS has funded it for someone else in the past. Now, there's a lot of debate about whether an FCA should list the reasonable and necessary criteria explicitly and that OTs need to address them. I would say that there's no definitive right or wrong answer, but it isn't something that I do. Instead, I'm keeping all of those things in mind as I'm coming to my recommendations in the first place and ensuring that my report has enough detail to allow the planner to make that assessment themselves. Now time for another freebie. If you are someone who struggles with knowing whether the evidence behind your recommendations is good enough, I have a worksheet that outlines my proof framework, which you can use as a reflective tool to think about whether the supports you're recommending are specific, evidence-based, and goal-oriented. So you can grab that one from the learning library in section six. Okay. Now, once you're clear on what you're recommending, how can you present that information clearly in your report? The key thing to know here is your audience. You're speaking to a non-health professional, an NDIS planner, so language considerations are huge. Planners are also very short on time, so you need to make sure that the important information is as easy to find as possible, as quickly as possible. So this means plain language, no jargon. It means using formatting that makes it really clear and easy to skim read, such as dot points, subheadings, clickable links, and even a table of contents for those longer reports. For those long reports, and I'm talking about FCAs and even things like SIL or SDA reports, also include an executive summary on the front page. Now, the format that I use is a half-page summary that explains what the purpose of the report is, some background information about the person, a summary of my main findings, and an overview of what supports I'm recommending. And the idea is that if a planner only reads that before jumping to the recommendation section, they'll at least have a clearer idea of who this person is, compared to if they just read the diagnosis and then jump to the recommendation section. Now, if you'd like to see an example of what an executive summary could look like, again, I've got you covered. Go to my free learning library. Again, in section six, you'll find one in there that you can download for free. I also highly recommend including photos in your report with your client's permission because these can be so much more clear and powerful than trying to explain something in words. So something like if you're recommending AT to assist with transfers, having a photo of a tiny frail carer with unsafe manual handling trying to support that family member is going to paint a much clearer picture than just using the words unsafe transfer. Now, I have a couple of specific tips for report writing that are really important, and one is to make sure that you describe your client's function clearly using specific numbers where possible and clearly stating their level of assistance and any risks. And also state whether you got that information from a direct observation or from something somebody told you. So instead of saying, "Gary has difficulty walking and can only manage short distances," you need to write something like, "Gary was observed to mobilize five meters using a walking stick and with standby assistance before needing a seated rest." The other tip is about presenting the results of standardised assessments. Now please do not just cut and paste long-winded result reports generated by an online assessment tool into your report. You need to interpret it first and pick out the important bits. So this includes stating when and how you did the assessment, which version you used, if there are multiple versions, who completed it, such as was it the client or a carer, and then present the most important results in a table or a graph format if you can. Then the final piece is to include that interpretation. So do these results fit with the rest of your findings? If not, why not? How do the results relate to the person's function and the support needs you're requesting? I also don't include the full standardised assessment score sheets as an appendix to my reports, but what I do is make sure that I have copies of them if I'm ever asked to explain my interpretation further. And also it's just a requirement that you need to keep this as part of your me-medical record keeping. Now, if you're a visual learner and want a slower walk through these two examples of describing function clearly and presenting the results of your standardised assessments, you guessed it, there's a freebie. So again, section six of the learning library, and you'll find one on some tips for NDIS report writing. And this one is also available on my YouTube channel too. Now, once you've finished your report, make sure you have someone else look over it, such as a peer or a supervisor, to get some feedback. Now, this can be incredibly valuable, even if they aren't someone who's the same profession as you, because they'll be reading that report as someone who probably doesn't know the person as well as you. So they can tell you if what you've written actually makes sense without knowing this background to the person. You can also request feedback from your client or referrer, but just check in with your supervisor or employer about how you do this. Um, often it's a tricky balance between inviting that feedback without allowing them to alter your report or to take it without having actually finalised payment for that service. So that is the end of the report writing part. If you are someone who really struggles with writing long NDIS reports, another resource that might be helpful for you is that I wrote a blog called The PEO Approach to Report Writing. So this encourages you to play to your strengths and to set up the task of writing in a way that's going to be the most efficient and sustainable for you. So I won't go into details about that now, but do go and check out the blog if you think that type of information could be helpful. Now, the final part of phase three, which probably could be and should be an extra phase all on its own, is the follow-up. I'll be short and sweet here, but this doesn't mean that this follow-up isn't important. Once you've submitted your FCA, don't forget about it, even if you don't have any ongoing contact with the client. You want to make sure that you know whether what you've recommended was approved so that you can make a plan around that. So sometimes it's that we need to provide more evidence, and if you did get something rejected, make sure you ask the support coordinator or the client to get that feedback about why in writing. Then you can address those points in a targeted way if the person would like to go for a review of that decision. Now, this is likely to be much more effective than just guessing why it was rejected and then rewriting the same information that you originally had in your report in a different way, or worse, the participant needing to go and start completely from scratch with a new OT and spending more chunks of funding on assessments and reports rather than therapy. So that follow-up can improve our clients' outcomes, but can also improve our own competence and confidence. So If everything gets rejected and the reasons come back, and you reflect on that, and you think, "You know what? Fair enough," you've just learnt a valuable gap that needs to be addressed in your approach next time. And if you get the good news that supports have been improved, this is a really powerful tool for boosting your confidence in a sector that can otherwise be quite unpredictable and challenging. Okay, so we've made it. That is the FCA process in a nutshell. Like I said at the start, the FCA might go away someday, but if and when it does, it's still an incredibly helpful skill to have. Assessing function, writing clear reports, and making therapy plans that are likely to work are core OT skills. Now, as I've gone through, I've name-dropped plenty of freebies for you that could be helpful, and they're all in the Learning Library in section six, but I'll share the details again in the show notes. But if you do need more than freebie help, there's plenty more help available. So while the NDIS isn't my only focus in my education business, one thing I do hyper-focus on within it is FCAs and report writing. So if you need more support, I have full courses, I do report reviews, and I offer one-on-one supervision. I've also developed a comprehensive FCA template that I've set up like a teaching tool with comments throughout that will help guide you in terms of how to gather the right information and what detail to include and why, not just an example of what to write. It's white labeled, and I've made it available as a one per workplace purchase, so you can purchase it, rebrand it, and update it to suit your client population, and then share it with the rest of your team. So I'll drop the links to all of those things in the show notes. Now, what's coming up in episode three of series one? We're going to cover something that applies across absolutely any caseload, giving effective client education. I've got another handy framework to share with you to make sure that you consider a range of factors so that your education is understandable, easy to apply to your client's daily routine, and actually leads to improved functional outcomes. Thanks for listening and tune in soon to find out more. The information shared on this podcast is for general educational use only, so please always use your own clinical reasoning and seek appropriate professional supervision for any individual client situations. If you'd like to learn more with Your OT Tutor so that you can be a better OT who loves what you do, check out the Your OT Tutor website. The links will be in the show notes. There are free resources in the learning library, paid CPD memberships, online courses, supervision and mentoring opportunities, and options for your team to all learn together with me.