While the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) is improving supports for people with significant and permanent disability, it is not the whole picture.

NDS is interested in how social impact investing could stimulate and support service innovation. Many disability service providers do not have adequate capital resources to support service innovation, and social impact investing is one way to address this.Caution must be used with this approach, however. Social impact investing typically requires tangible outcome measures. Outcomes achieved by a substantial proportion of the supports that will be funded by the NDIS (such as personal care and support to participate in community activities) cannot easily be measured; nor does successful service provision which improves the quality of life of service recipients generally result in a reduction of supports. Any investigation of social impact investing for disability services should take this into account.