Changing support coordinator: what should be in the handover

What this page is not

This is not advice to switch.

Participants can change support coordinator. Official NDIS guidance says you can do that at any time if you follow the notice period in the service agreement. Read that agreement. This page does not invent a number of days.

It is not a clinical handover, a complaint letter, or an emergency plan. It does not replace portal steps for ending a booking or starting a new one. Use the official pages for those clicks.

If someone may be unsafe, do not wait for a handover report. Use the agreed emergency or safeguarding channel.

Leave cover is a different job. Use Support coordinator on leave when the usual person is coming back.

What official guidance already asks for

The NDIA already tells an outgoing support coordinator to prepare a handover report.

In current official wording, that report should outline how the participant is going with:

• Working towards their goals
• Using their NDIS plan
• Building skills and independence
• Strengthening community connections with other support systems

What families should ask for on top

The official report is a picture of progress. The incoming coordinator also needs a picture of work that is still open. Ask for these fields in the same pack, not in a second novel.

1. Who is at the centre, and who decides

Name they use. Day-to-day family or nominee contact. Who has authority to agree a share. Not a biography.

2. The end date

The agreed last day of the outgoing service. If that date is not written down, the handover is not finished.

3. What matters now

The live goals or problems this month — the ones that still have a next step. Not every goal that has ever been written.

4. What is waiting

Each open item on its own line: what it is, who currently owns the next step, what it is waiting on, the next check date. A new coordinator can work a waiting list. They cannot work ‘a few things in train.’

5. Who is in the team

Providers and professionals currently involved, and what they are there to do. A name, a role, a current contact — not every organisation that was ever tried.

6. Where the latest document is

One labelled file for each live item. ‘OT letter, August 2026’ is useful. ‘Reports.zip’ is not. Say who is allowed to see it.

7. What must not be restarted

Do not book a second OT. Do not change the plan manager this fortnight. Do not send the draft school letter. If nothing is on hold, write that.

8. Barriers and risks already named

Only what is current and already being managed, plus who owns that strategy. Do not use the handover to open a new complaint.

What not to hand over

Do not attach the last three years.

An incoming coordinator does not need every closed complaint, every expired goal, and the story of why this change is happening — unless that story changes what they must do in the first fortnight.

Leave out:

• Internal case notes the new person should not inherit by default
• Clinical detail that belongs in another professional’s system
• Passwords, portal logins, or payment-card details
• Family arguments dressed up as coordination context
• Old plans ‘for comparison’ when a current plan exists
• Anything the participant has not agreed the incoming coordinator should see

Who writes it, and who receives it

Default: the outgoing support coordinator writes the official handover report.

The Team leader — often a parent, partner, adult sibling or nominee — should receive a copy and keep the waiting list honest. They should not have to write the official report from memory the night before the fifteenth.

If the outgoing coordinator will not write it, the Team leader can still send the eight fields above from what they know. That is worse than a report written on time. It is better than an incoming coordinator starting from zero.

The incoming coordinator should not have to chase three versions. One pack. One end date. The participant or authorised decision-maker agrees what is shared.

Do not use the handover as the place to litigate the old relationship. Write the current picture. End the booking. Start the new agreement.

The first fortnight after the change

The incoming coordinator does not need to ‘get across the whole file.’

They need to:

• Confirm they can reach the family contact
• Confirm they can see the latest labelled document for each waiting item
• Put their name on the next step they now own
• Reply once to anyone still writing to the old inbox
• Review who still has the plan, and official consent, now that the owner has changed

If there is no report

Some changes happen quickly. Some outgoing coordinators do not write the pack.

Write the eight fields anyway. Name the end date if you have one. Name the waiting list from what you know. Give that to the incoming person.

Paused is a decision. Silence is not.

If a review date, a provider end date, or a support that stops sits inside the changeover, do not leave those items without an owner for a fortnight.

If you want the picture to survive the change

The emails above work in an inbox. That is enough.

If every change of coordinator means the family retells the year, that is the gap a shared workspace is for. The owner of coordination can change. The current picture should not have to move house.

In Kinovo that picture already has a home:

• Who is at the centre, and the family contact, sit in the shared profile. That is a short current picture, not a medical record.
• What matters now sits as a goal.
• The waiting list sits as tasks: one owner, what it is waiting on, a next-check date.
• Standing ‘do not’ can sit as a short Care Protocol.
• The latest documents sit in the private library, labelled and linked. Each file has its own visibility. Linking a file does not widen who can open it.