Increased Social and Community Participation is the Capacity Building budget for learning to join in. It pays for courses, classes and programs that build the skills and confidence to take part in community life — not for a support worker to come along each week.
It is one of the least-used categories in the scheme, and almost always for the same reason: the name describes an outcome rather than a thing you can buy, so nobody is sure what to ask for.
What is Increased Social and Community Participation?
It is a Capacity Building support category that funds skill development aimed at community life — classes, courses, group programs, mentoring and training that leave a participant more able to take part on their own terms.
Plans sometimes show it as CB Social Community Civic, which is the price guide’s name for the same category. On the plan itself it usually appears under Capacity Building as “Increased Social and Community Participation”.
How is it different from the Core community participation support?
The Core category pays for support to do the activity. This one pays for learning to need less support. They sound almost identical and they are funded, budgeted and justified completely differently.
| Core: Assistance with Social and Community Participation | Capacity Building: Increased Social and Community Participation | |
|---|---|---|
| The point | Taking part | Building the ability to take part |
| Example | A worker goes to the gym with you | A program that gets you confident enough to go alone |
| Shape | Ongoing, hourly | A course or program with an end point |
| Flexible? | Usually, across Core | Generally fixed to this category |
Our guide to NDIS community participation covers the Core side in more detail, and how the two work together.
What can the funding be used for?
Structured programs that teach something transferable — a skills course, a group program with a curriculum, mentoring, social skills work, or training that leads towards employment, volunteering or study.
Real examples:
- Skills courses — cooking, art, music, gardening, digital skills, anything taught over a series of sessions
- Group programs where participants build confidence alongside each other
- Social skills programs, including those aimed at friendships and workplaces
- Mentoring and peer support from somebody with lived experience
- Travel training where the aim is independent access to community life
- Volunteering preparation and the skills to hold a volunteer role
- Pre-employment programs that build general work readiness
The common thread is that each one ends with the participant able to do something they could not do before. A program that simply fills a Tuesday does not qualify, however pleasant it is.
What makes a program count as capacity building?
Three things, in practice: it teaches something specific, it is structured rather than open-ended, and somebody can tell at the end whether the skill was built. Providers running genuine capacity building programs can usually describe all three without hesitating.
If you are weighing up a program, ask what a participant will be able to do at the end that they could not do at the start. A good provider answers immediately. A vague answer usually means the program is participation dressed up as capacity building, which is fine in itself but belongs in a different budget.
Where does it show on your plan?
In the Capacity Building section, under a heading that reads “Increased Social and Community Participation”. Plan portals and plan managers sometimes label it CB Social Community Civic.
If the heading is not there, the funding was not approved, and the route to getting it is a plan reassessment rather than a conversation with a provider.
Is the funding flexible?
Generally not. Capacity Building budgets are normally tied to the category they were approved in, so this money cannot be moved into Core or into another Capacity Building category — and Core money cannot be moved into it.
The practical consequence is that unspent funding here does not quietly help elsewhere. It sits unused, and at the next reassessment the NDIA can reasonably read that as evidence the category was not needed. Categories that go unspent are the ones most likely to come back smaller.
How do you get it into your plan?
Ask at the reassessment, with a goal about community participation already in the plan and a specific program in mind. The strongest version of the request names what you want to do, what it costs, how long it runs and what you will be able to do at the end.
What tends to work:
- A goal phrased around independence or connection — “I want to build friendships outside my family” or “I want to be able to join a group on my own”.
- Evidence of the gap — isolation, anxiety about new settings, reliance on family to go anywhere.
- A named program with a price, so the planner is approving something concrete rather than a category.
- A reason it builds capacity, stated plainly: what the participant will be able to do afterwards.
That last point is the one most requests leave out, and it is the one this category is judged on.