Victorian rules, in short. A Ballarat provider follows the same state requirements as one in Melbourne. Workers apply for the NDIS Worker Screening Check through Service Victoria, it's assessed by Victoria's NDIS Worker Screening Unit, it lasts five years, and it sits alongside, not instead of, a Working with Children Check. The Victorian Disability Worker Commission regulates the disability workforce across the state. Our Melbourne NDIS provider page explains how both show up on a provider's website.
Six councils, one district. The NDIA counted 8,455 participants in Central Highlands at 30 June 2026. The City of Ballarat accounted for 4,948 of them, up from 3,283 in June 2022, followed by Moorabool (1,418), Golden Plains (992), Hepburn (441), Ararat (427) and Pyrenees (229). Several of the smaller shires grew faster than the city in percentage terms: Moorabool and Golden Plains each rose by about 60%, Hepburn by about half.
One partner for adults and children. Latrobe Community Health Service is the NDIA's local area coordination partner for the Central Highlands, working from Central Square on Armstrong Street in Ballarat and from Bacchus Marsh, and it provides the early childhood approach from the Ballarat office as well. Two boundaries are worth knowing. Ararat is counted in Central Highlands, while its neighbours Stawell and Horsham are in the NDIA's Western District, so a provider covering all three towns is working across two districts. Central Goldfields Shire, home to Maryborough, isn't in Central Highlands either: the NDIA places it in its Loddon district, where Intereach is the partner, and it had 587 participants in June 2026.
How plans are managed here. Of the district's 8,455 plans, 6,027 were plan-managed, 1,531 fully self-managed, 472 partly self-managed and 392 NDIA-managed, which works out at 71.3%, 18.1%, 5.6% and 4.6%. Nationally the figures were 68.8% plan-managed, 20.8% fully self-managed and 6.0% NDIA-managed. With fewer than one plan in twenty NDIA-managed, most Ballarat participants are free to use an unregistered provider for supports that don't require registration, but that small group still needs to know at a glance whether you're registered.
Working with us from Ballarat. We're an Adelaide team, and Ballarat providers deal with us by phone and email; our clocks run half an hour behind yours. We don't have a client in Ballarat, and the one Victorian client in our portfolio is a coaching practice in Melbourne. You send your supports, towns and photos, we send a draft to click through on your phone, and payment comes only after you've approved it.