Short term accommodation and respite (STA)

Short term accommodation (STA) is NDIS funding that gives you time apart from your usual carers, usually family, while someone else provides the support they normally would. The NDIS generally funds up to 28 days a year, for up to 14 days at a time. Since October 2025 the NDIA has called it short term respite, though most people still say STA. Trailblazer provides STA for participants in Logan, Ipswich, Brisbane and Redland Bay.

There is nothing awkward about a family needing respite. Caring for someone every day is hard work, and the NDIS funds STA because a rested family can keep caring for longer. Using it says nothing bad about you or the person you support.

Where your STA stay happens

We can arrange single-night and emergency stays when we have staff and a place available. Call us on 1300 822 333 and we'll tell you straight away what we can do.

The NDIS lets you use STA in your own home, in a shared setting or in an individual one. If you usually need overnight support, a support worker can stay with you in your own home while your family has a break somewhere else. Tell us which setting you're after when you get in touch and we'll say plainly whether we can do it.

Who can get STA funding

The NDIA decides who gets STA, based on its published guideline. In short, you may be eligible if:

• you live with your primary informal supports, such as family, friends or a carer, or you get daily drop-in support from them, and
• they give you disability-related support for more than 6 hours a day on a long-term basis.

The guideline also names people who receive high intensity supports, such as enteral feeding or complex bowel care. The NDIA usually looks at other supports first, like personal care at home or a support worker for a weekly outing, before adding STA to a plan.

STA is not for holidays and it isn't crisis accommodation. If you need somewhere to live, contact your state housing service, or look at medium term accommodation if you're waiting on a long-term home.

What STA funding covers, and what it doesn't

STA funding pays for:

• your accommodation for the stay
• the personal care and everyday help your family would normally give you, like showering, getting ready for the day and cooking
• the support you need to take part in community, cultural or social activities during the stay

It doesn't pay for:

• food or meals, which you buy or bring yourself
• the activities themselves, such as tickets, entry fees or memberships
• holidays, airfares or tourist accommodation
• transport to the stay if you can travel independently

That split between support (funded) and costs (not funded) can catch families out. Ask any provider how it handles a support worker's entry costs when you go out together, because some charge them to you and some don't.

At Trailblazer, meals during a stay are paid for by the participant. The participant also covers a support worker's entry fees and outing costs, unless the worker gets in free through a concession or a Companion Card.

Using your 28 days

STA sits in your Core budget as flexible funding, so you decide how to spread it across the plan. Some families book one weekend a month. Others save it for a block of up to 14 days, say while a parent has surgery or the family travels to a wedding interstate. Each stay is at least one night.

The catch with flexible funding is that it has to last the whole plan. If you use it all in the first few months, there may be nothing left for the rest of the year. We'll help you plan the bookings so the days run to your plan's end date.

Care during a stay

Respite only works if your family can actually switch off. That means the people supporting you need to know your routines, your health needs and the little things that make the difference between a good night and a bad one.

Our clinical care is overseen by Exavier Rikonda, a registered nurse with 14 years of nursing experience. If you have a catheter, a PEG tube, a wound that needs dressing or diabetes to manage, your stay is planned with that in mind, and the high intensity and complex care side of our work is part of the same team. Before your first stay we'll sit down with you and your family to go through it all, and write it down so every worker has it.

How we keep stays safe, from worker screening to incident reporting, is on our quality and safeguarding page.

A few things we don't do

We can't approve NDIS funding, and no provider can. Only the NDIA decides whether STA goes in your plan and how many days. If a provider tells you they can get your funding approved, be careful.

We also don't provide support coordination, plan management or Specialist Disability Accommodation (SDA). If you need any of those, we'll work alongside the people you already have.