What community nursing actually is
A community nurse is a registered nurse — registered with AHPRA, the national regulator — who comes to you. Instead of you travelling to care, the care travels to you: your home, and sometimes a day program, school or workplace where that is where the need arises.
The distinction that matters is clinical. Support workers do enormous amounts of valuable work, but a registered nurse can assess a clinical situation, make a clinical judgement, and decide whether a task can safely be handed to someone else. That is why nursing sits at the centre of support arrangements for people with complex health needs, even when a nurse is not the person present every day.
What a nurse can do in your home
The range is wider than most people expect. Community nursing commonly covers:
- Wound care, including complex and slow-healing wounds
- Catheter care and continence support
- PEG and other enteral (tube) feeding
- Tracheostomy care and support with ventilation
- Stoma care
- Epilepsy and seizure management planning
- Diabetes support, including subcutaneous injections
- Medication management and administration
- Health assessments, care planning and monitoring for changes
- Training and supervising support workers to deliver specific clinical tasks safely
Who community nursing is for
Broadly, anyone whose disability comes with a health need that requires clinical skill. That includes people with degenerative or neurological conditions, people with complex physical disability, people returning home after a hospital stay, and people whose day-to-day support involves a clinical task like tube feeding or bowel care.
It is also for the people around them. A lot of community nursing is invisible: writing the care plan that tells a support team exactly what to do, training those workers, and reviewing whether it is still working as someone's health changes. Families who have been carrying clinical responsibility on their own often feel that shift most.
How nursing and support workers divide the work
This is the question we are asked most, and the answer is more nuanced than 'nurses do clinical things and support workers do not'. Certain higher-risk supports — the NDIS calls them high intensity supports — can be delivered by a trained support worker, provided that worker has been trained and assessed as competent for that specific support and that specific person, and a nurse maintains oversight.
So the right question to ask a provider is not just 'is a nurse coming?' but 'who trained the person who is coming, who assessed their competency, and which nurse is responsible for that oversight?'. Our guide to high intensity supports works through that in detail.
How community nursing is funded
It depends on the care. Nurse-delivered high intensity daily personal activities usually come from the Core Supports budget, while some nursing and health-related supports sit under Capacity Building. Where a health need is unrelated to disability, it may be funded through the health system rather than the NDIS at all — the NDIS funds disability-related supports, not general healthcare. Our guide to NDIS plan budgets explains how the budgets differ.
If your plan does not currently fund nursing and you think it should, a nursing assessment setting out the clinical need is usually what the NDIS wants to see. A provider with nurses on staff can help you understand what evidence would be relevant.
Arranging community nursing
Care Alliance delivers community nursing across Newcastle, Lake Macquarie, Maitland, Cessnock, Port Stephens and the Central Coast, with AHPRA-registered nurses, nursing oversight of our support work teams, and a 24/7 on-call team that includes RN support. We are also an approved high intensity supports provider and support people coming home from hospital through our hospital discharge service.
If you are weighing up whether nursing belongs in your supports, our intake team will talk it through with you — including telling you if we are not the right fit. There is no obligation, and we offer a free meet-and-greet before anything is signed.
Common questions
Do I need a doctor's referral for NDIS community nursing?
You do not need a doctor's referral to enquire with a provider. What matters for NDIS-funded nursing is that the need is disability-related and that your plan has appropriate funding. Clinical information from your GP or treating team is often useful evidence, but it is not a gate you have to pass through before making contact.
Can a support worker do clinical tasks instead of a nurse?
For some supports, yes. Tasks like PEG feeding or complex bowel care can be delivered by a support worker who has been trained and assessed as competent for that specific support and that specific person, with a registered nurse maintaining oversight. It is the training, the person-specific competency and the clinical supervision that make it safe — not the job title on its own.
Is community nursing the same as high intensity support?
They overlap but are not the same. Community nursing is care delivered by a registered nurse. High intensity supports are a defined group of higher-risk supports that require specific training and clinical oversight, and which may be delivered by a trained support worker under a nurse's supervision rather than by the nurse directly.
Can nurses visit outside business hours?
Arrangements vary between providers, so ask. At Care Alliance the 24/7 on-call team includes Registered Nurse support, so participants, families and staff can reach clinical guidance at any hour. The on-call team is not an emergency service — in an emergency, call Triple Zero (000).
This guide is general information about the NDIS, not advice about your individual situation, and scheme rules change over time. For decisions about your plan, check the current guidance at ndis.gov.au or talk to your support coordinator, planner — or call us on 1300 206 309.