The eight supports, named
High intensity supports are the personal activities the Commission treats as carrying enough risk to need a named skills descriptor and, for registered providers, registration group 104. The eight that formally link to the HIDPA practice standard are:
- Complex bowel care
- Enteral feeding support, covering naso-gastric, jejunum and duodenum feeding
- Severe dysphagia support
- Ventilator support
- Tracheostomy support
- Urinary catheter support, in-dwelling, in-out and suprapubic
- Subcutaneous injections
- Complex wound care support
Epilepsy and seizure support runs across four pages of the same document with the same structure as the eight, and the Commission states on page 44 that it "is not formally linked to the HIDPA practice standards". It is additional guidance that can form a co-requisite. The descriptor document and the practice standard itself also use slightly different names for the same eight supports, which matters when a training matrix quotes one and an auditor checks the other. Both are set out in the eight descriptors, and why epilepsy isn't one.
The six questions, answered page by page
- The NDIS High Intensity Support Skills Descriptors, Explained for Providers. What the descriptors require, who they bind, and the September 2024 revision date that does not exist.
- The Eight High Intensity Support Skills Descriptors (and Why Epilepsy Isn't One). The eight that formally link to the HIDPA practice standard, and why epilepsy sits outside them.
- Who Can Deliver High Intensity Training Under the NDIS Skills Descriptors. Seven of the eight have a non-clinician pathway. Severe dysphagia does not.
- High Intensity Training Has Four Tiers. General knowledge, support-specific, participant-specific and confirmed competency, and who owns each.
- Required vs Recommended: The Annual Review and Three-Month Rule. The annual review is written as a recommendation with a flex clause, and most provider policies drop both.
- What an NDIS Auditor Asks For on High Intensity Supports. The question is about one named worker and one named support, not whether you run the training.
The wider question of where online learning helps and where supervised practice is the only thing that counts is covered in high intensity support skills: where eLearning helps, and where it can't.
Four things providers get wrong
Each of these is a misreading with a cost attached, and each one is traceable to a specific page of the source.
- Nine supports instead of eight. Epilepsy gets counted in, usually because a summary listed it, and a training matrix ends up claiming a HIDPA link the Commission explicitly rules out.
- A clinician for everything. Seven of the eight have a pathway that does not require a health practitioner. Severe dysphagia is the exception, with no alternative pathway. Assuming the heavier rule everywhere costs money and delays rosters.
- The annual review read as a hard rule. The document says recommended, every time, and attaches a flex clause on the worker's experience and the support involved.
- A general online certificate treated as the whole evidence. It evidences general knowledge. It does not evidence participant-specific training or who confirmed the worker against the descriptor, and both are part of what the quality indicators check.
Where a training platform fits, and where it does not
CORA Workforce is compliance training and workforce record software for Australian NDIS providers, and on high intensity supports it holds the records rather than replacing the assessment. General knowledge courses are delivered and tracked with due dates and renewals. The participant-specific session, who delivered it, who confirmed the worker against the descriptor and how that person qualifies, is recorded against the named worker in the credential and evidence register, alongside the review date. All of it exports as an audit-ready training register and credential register.
What CORA does not do, and no eLearning platform does, is confirm a worker is competent to deliver a high intensity support. That sign-off stays with an appropriately qualified person, and for severe dysphagia the source document leaves no alternative to a health practitioner with expertise in it. CORA holds the evidence of that assessment; it does not perform it. See the standard every claim on this site is held to.
Common questions
What are the NDIS high intensity supports?
Eight supports have skills descriptors that formally link to the High Intensity Daily Personal Activities practice standard: complex bowel care, enteral feeding, severe dysphagia, ventilator management, tracheostomy, urinary catheter management, subcutaneous injections and complex wound management. Epilepsy and seizure support is covered by the same Commission document as additional guidance, and the document states it is not formally linked to the HIDPA practice standards.
Which document sets out the high intensity support skills descriptors?
NDIS Practice Standards: High intensity support skills descriptors, Guidance for NDIS providers and auditors, published by the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission. Its own title page reads November 2022, Version 3. There is no later published version.
Can an online course meet the high intensity training requirement on its own?
No. The descriptors describe general knowledge, which an online course can teach, and training specific to the person being supported that is confirmed by an appropriately qualified person, which it cannot. A completion certificate evidences the first and not the second, so both records are needed.
Is the annual competency review a hard NDIS rule?
The source document uses the word recommended every time it raises the annual review, and attaches a clause allowing the timeframe to move depending on the support and the worker's experience. Many provider policies state it as a flat twelve-month rule and drop the flex clause.
See the full NDIS audit evidence checklist, or build a free training pathway around the people you support.