12 breakfasts
Weeks one to four. Fifteen minutes of hands-on time or less, starting with three that need no cooking at all and building to eggs and baking.
Registered NDIS provider
Enrolling now
NDIS Healthy Cooking Program
Ten Saturdays, thirty-two meals. Twelve breakfasts, eight lunches and twelve dinners, cooked from scratch and taken home on a card you can read — so that at the end of it there is a week of food you can make on your own. Starts 14 November at Helensvale.
- Starts Saturday 14 November 2026
- Runs for 10 Saturdays, 10:00am – 1:00pm
- Where Helensvale Library & Cultural Centre, Gold Coast QLD
- Group size Maximum 5 participants
The course
Thirty-two meals, across every part of the day
Not a demonstration class. Participants do the cooking, every week, and the recipes were chosen because they are the meals a person actually needs to be able to make for themselves.
8 lunches
Weeks five and six. Four cold and four warm — the kind of thing you make at midday without planning it the night before.
12 dinners
Weeks seven to nine. One-pan meals, family favourites, then fish and bakes, with a food thermometer and a real check that the chicken is cooked.
Cost
Claimed against your NDIS plan
The same price and the same terms as our baking course. Here is exactly what is charged, so you or your plan manager can check it before you commit to anything.
Full 10-week course
$1,400
$140 a session × 10 weekly sessions
Claimed session by session, never charged upfront.
Claimable through your planEvery session includes
- All ingredients and equipment, cooktops included
- A facilitator, and a group of no more than five
- An easy-read card for every recipe, to keep
- A meal eaten together, and leftovers packed to take home
- Your support worker alongside you, at no extra charge
- Service agreement, session outlines and progress notes
Enquiring costs nothing and commits you to nothing — we will check your funding fits before anyone signs anything.
How payment works. The course is claimed one session at a time, as each session is delivered — $140 a session. It is not charged as a lump sum before the course starts, and you are never invoiced for a session that has not run.
Trying one session first. You do not have to commit to ten weeks to find out whether it suits. A single come-and-try session is $140, and if you carry on, it counts as your first week.
Getting there. Pick-up and drop-off is available if transport is the thing standing in the way. It is optional, quoted separately at $140 a session, and claimed against your transport or core supports rather than the course itself.
Leaving the course. If a participant decides to stop, we ask for two weeks' notice in writing. Sessions delivered during those two weeks are claimed as normal, and nothing is charged for the weeks after the notice period ends. That is about leaving the course — an occasional absence is handled under the short notice cancellation rules in the NDIS Pricing Arrangements and in your service agreement.
Nothing here limits your rights under the Australian Consumer Law. If we cancel a session or do not deliver the course as described, you are not charged for it and you are entitled to a remedy.
Schedule of supports
The same support items as our baking course, because it is the same kind of support delivered the same way. Which one applies depends on what is approved in the participant's plan; coordinators and plan managers are welcome to quote these directly.
Capacity Building
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Skills Development and Training
09_009_0117_6_3
Community Access
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Innovative Community Participation
09_008_0116_6_3 -
Centre Capital Cost
04_599_0136_6_1
Core
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Group Activities — Standard — Weekday Daytime
04_102_0136_6_1 -
Centre Capital Cost
04_599_0136_6_1
Week by week
Starting with food that needs no cooking
Week one is overnight oats, a parfait and a smoothie — nothing hot, nothing sharp, and three things finished and eaten by the end of the session. Confidence first, then the cooktop.
- Week 1 Kitchen safety and no-cook breakfasts Overnight oats · Yoghurt parfait · Green smoothie
- Week 2 Toast and spreads Avocado smash toast · Banana and peanut butter toast · Chia pudding
- Week 3 Eggs for breakfast Veggie scrambled eggs · Breakfast egg wrap · Spinach and feta egg muffins
- Week 4 Make-ahead breakfasts Bircher muesli · Wholemeal banana pancakes · Baked oat and berry cups
- Week 5 Fresh lunches Chicken salad wrap · Tuna, bean and corn salad · Chickpea salad · Rice paper rolls
- Week 6 Warm lunches Pumpkin soup · Pita pizzas · Bean and veg quesadillas · Veggie egg fried rice
- Week 7 One-pan dinners Sheet-pan chicken and veg · Veggie frittata · Chicken stir-fry · Homemade burgers
- Week 8 Family favourites Hidden-veg bolognese · Burrito bowls · Mild chicken curry · Lentil dahl
- Week 9 Fish and bakes Baked salmon and sweet potato · Oven-crumbed fish · Chicken souvlaki · Sweet potato shepherd's pie
- Week 10 Plan my week, and graduation Cook a favourite from the course, write a one-week meal plan and shopping list, then graduation and certificates
In the weeks with four recipes, each pair cooks one or two dishes and everybody tastes all four. Every participant takes home the full set of cards regardless.
Christmas break. There is no class on Saturday 26 December or Saturday 2 January. Week six is 19 December, week seven picks up on 9 January, and graduation is Saturday 30 January 2027. Nothing is claimed for the two weeks we do not run.
A typical session
Three hours, and it is the same shape every week
The routine does not change, because for a lot of participants knowing exactly what happens next is what makes the rest of it possible.
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Welcome — 15 minutes
Hand washing, aprons on, and a look at today's recipe cards before anybody picks anything up.
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One new skill — 15 minutes
A demonstration of a single thing: a safe knife grip, cracking an egg, or checking with a thermometer that chicken is cooked through.
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Cook — 90 minutes
In pairs or at rotating stations, following picture recipe cards, with staff stepping back as the weeks go on.
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Eat together — 30 minutes
Everybody sits down to what the group made, and we talk about the healthy plate: half vegetables, a quarter protein, a quarter wholegrains.
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Clean up — 20 minutes
Washing up is part of cooking, not something done for you. Leftovers go into labelled containers to take home.
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Recap — 10 minutes
What I made today, and what I am going to cook at home this week. The second half is the point of the course.
In the kitchen
Real food, cooked by the people eating it
This is a bench partway through one of our savoury sessions — cornbread out of the oven, a tray of Yorkshire puddings, and a participant slicing the chicken for everyone to share.
Nobody is watching a demonstration. Every pair has a station, a picture recipe card and a job, and the facilitator steps back a little further each week. What comes out of the oven is lunch, and whatever is left goes home in a labelled container.
What it builds
What a participant can do by week ten
Written as outcomes rather than aspirations, because this is the language a support coordinator needs to match the course to a plan. Each one is something that genuinely happens in the kitchen.
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Cook a balanced meal unsupported
A simple breakfast, lunch and dinner, made on their own or with light support — which for some participants is the first meal they have ever cooked without somebody else at the bench.
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Follow a recipe start to finish
Reading an easy-read card with one step per line, gathering what is needed, and working through the steps in order without being prompted through each one.
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Use a kitchen safely
Knife, oven, cooktop, microwave and blender, plus hand washing, colour-coded boards and a thermometer check on chicken and mince.
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Plan and shop for a week
Writing a shopping list and a one-week meal plan on a budget — the week-ten task, and the part that keeps working long after the course finishes.
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Store and reheat food safely
Cooling and labelling leftovers, keeping them the right length of time, reheating them properly, and throwing away less food.
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Eat better without being told to
The healthy plate is taught by building it and then eating it every week, rather than as a rule on a handout. Nobody is weighed and nothing is forbidden.
Access, diets and allergens
How the kitchen is set up
A cooking class has more ways to exclude somebody than a baking class does — bench height, hand strength, knives, heat and what a person is able to eat. So each of those is planned before the course starts rather than worked around on the day.
An accessible bench
- Picture-based, easy-read recipe cards in large print, one step per line
- Seated workstations at a bench height that works sitting down
- Adaptive tools — non-slip mats, large-grip utensils, rocker knives, jar openers, hand-guard graters
- Pre-cut and frozen vegetables on hand for anyone with limited hand strength
- Colour-coded chopping boards — red for raw meat, green for vegetables
Safety in every session
- Hand washing on arrival, after raw meat, and after touching a face or a phone
- The facilitator or support worker handles boiling water, draining pots and hot oven trays
- A food thermometer check — chicken and mince to 75°C, every time
- Leftovers cooled, labelled with a name and date, and sent home in a cooler bag
- Participants on a texture-modified diet get their portion prepared to the level in their plan
If there is a meal plan, the meal plan wins. These are general healthy-eating meals, not medical diets. Where a participant has a plan from a dietitian or a speech pathologist, that plan is followed and the recipe is adapted to it — never the other way round. Send us the plan at intake and we will tell you honestly which weeks need changing.
Allergens are known in advance. Every participant completes an intake form covering allergies, intolerances, and cultural or religious food needs. From those we build a class allergen register and check it against each week's recipes before the session. Peanut, fish, shellfish, eggs, dairy and gluten all appear somewhere in the thirty-two, and any of them can be swapped out.
Everything you need to know
What is included
- Claimable through your NDIS plan
- Delivered by a registered NDIS provider
- Open to NDIS participants aged 16 and over
- No cooking experience needed — week one needs no cooking at all
- All ingredients and equipment provided, cooktops included
- Support workers and family welcome in the kitchen
- Maximum 5 participants per class
- Easy-read recipe cards to keep, every single week
Where it runs
At Helensvale, or in your own kitchen
Classes run from the teaching kitchen at Helensvale Library & Cultural Centre on the Gold Coast — one level, parking at the door, and the room our baking course ran in for its first three intakes. Baking has moved south to Palm Beach so that both courses can run on the same Saturday morning.
The course also travels. We deliver it inside SIL houses, group homes and aged care facilities, which is often the better option: residents learn in the kitchen they will actually be cooking in, and nobody has to be transported anywhere. We bring every piece of equipment, including portable cooktops where a kitchen does not have them.
Our Helensvale page has the practical detail on the venue, and this page covers how a course runs inside a facility.
Common questions
Questions people ask about this course
- When does the first course start?
- Saturday 14 November 2026, 10:00am to 1:00pm, at Helensvale Library & Cultural Centre. It runs weekly from there, with no class on 26 December or 2 January, and graduation on Saturday 30 January 2027. There are five places in the first class.
- Is this the same as the baking course?
- No. The baking course is cakes, bread, donuts and chocolate — ten weeks of baking, finishing with a competition. This one is meals: breakfast, lunch and dinner, cooked from scratch, aimed at being able to feed yourself. Same length, same price, same small groups. The cooking course does not assume you did the baking one first.
- Can I do this and the baking course at the same time?
- Not in this intake. Both run on Saturday mornings from 14 November — cooking at Helensvale, baking at Palm Beach — so you would have to pick one and take the other in a later intake. Tell us if you want both and we will put you down for the next baking intake when it is set.
- Do I need to be able to cook already?
- No, and week one is designed to prove it — overnight oats, a yoghurt parfait and a smoothie, none of which involve heat or a sharp knife. The cooktop does not appear until week three.
- Is there an age limit?
- It is for participants aged 16 and over. There is hot oil, boiling water and knife work in the later weeks, and the course is pitched at somebody working towards living more independently. For younger children, our school holiday baking workshops are the better fit.
- Can my support worker come with me?
- Yes, and we would rather they did. There is no extra charge, they are welcome in the kitchen rather than waiting outside, and the handover of what a participant can now do at home works far better when the person who supports them at home has seen it.
- What if I have allergies or a special diet?
- Tell us at intake. We build an allergen register for the class and check it against each week's recipes before the session, and any recipe can be swapped. If you have a meal plan from a dietitian or speech pathologist, send it through — we follow the plan and adapt the recipe to it.
- Do I keep the recipes?
- Yes. Every participant takes home an easy-read card for every recipe covered that week, whether or not they were the one who cooked it — large print, pictures, one step per line. By week ten that is all thirty-two.
- Can you run it at our SIL house or facility?
- Yes. We deliver the whole course inside SIL houses, group homes and aged care facilities, and bring all the equipment including cooktops. Call 0451 115 196 or email info@careandculinary.com.au and we will put a quote together for your residents.
Enquire about a place
Five places in the first class
The first intake starts Saturday 14 November and takes five participants. Tell us a little about who the place is for and we will confirm availability and send through what you need to get started.