Functional Capacity Assessments in Parramatta
Mobile, evidence-based functional capacity assessments for NDIS participants across Parramatta and Western Sydney. Our AHPRA-registered occupational therapists assess you where you actually live, whether that is a house, a unit or supported accommodation.
Do you need a functional capacity assessment in Parramatta?
A functional capacity assessment (FCA) is an occupational therapy assessment of how you manage everyday activities, and what supports would help you live more independently. In Parramatta a great deal of that depends on the building you live in, so we assess in place rather than in a clinic.
- ✓ An NDIS application or a plan review is coming up
- ✓ You are coming home from hospital and things are not as they were
- ✓ A support coordinator, planner, GP or discharge team has asked for one
- ✓ You need equipment, a modification, therapy or support hours funded
- ✓ A decision is going to external review at the Administrative Review Tribunal (ART) and needs independent evidence
What we assess, from the bedroom to the street
We assess across the parts of daily life that decide how independently you can live, and we pay close attention to how the building itself either helps or gets in the way.
Showering and dressing
Showering, dressing, grooming and toileting, and whether the bathroom you have makes any of it harder than it needs to be.
Getting around indoors
Moving through the home, doorways and hallways, on and off the bed and toilet, and managing a frame or stick in a tight space.
Household tasks
Cooking, cleaning, laundry and shopping, including trips to a shared laundry or bin area that most assessments never look at.
Leaving the building
Lifts, stairs, entries, ramps and getting to transport, because in a unit block independence starts at the front door of the building, not the flat.
Thinking and planning
Memory, attention, planning and problem-solving, and how they hold up across a full day rather than an hour.
Being heard, and being safe
Being understood, and what would happen in an emergency, including whether you could reach the door or raise an alarm.
The conditions we write functional capacity assessments for
We assess function rather than diagnosis, so this is not a checklist you have to appear on. It is a guide to the kinds of situations we are asked about most often across Parramatta and Western Sydney.
Physical and neurological
- Acquired and traumatic brain injury
- Stroke and its longer-term effects
- Spinal cord injury
- Cerebral palsy
- Multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s and other progressive conditions
- Amputation and limb difference
- Chronic pain and persistent fatigue conditions
Cognitive and neurodevelopmental
- Autism
- Intellectual disability
- ADHD and executive function difficulty
- Learning disability
- Dementia and age-related cognitive change
- Cognitive change following injury or illness
Psychosocial and mental health
- Schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder
- Bipolar disorder
- Severe and persistent depression and anxiety
- Post-traumatic stress
- Eating disorders where daily function is affected
- Psychosocial disability arising from any of the above
Sensory, communication and complex needs
- Vision and hearing impairment
- Communication and speech difficulty
- Dual and multiple diagnoses
- Complex medical and care needs
- Situations where nobody has yet worked out which report is needed
If your situation is not on this list, it does not mean we cannot help. Call us and we will tell you honestly whether an FCA is the right report, or whether something else would serve you better.
Why we assess more than once, and in more than one place
One appointment shows one hour. We gather evidence from several directions so the report describes an ordinary week and holds up when a delegate reads it closely.
Start with what you want back
We ask what you are trying to return to, or reach for the first time. Everything after that is measured against it rather than a generic list.
Assessment where you live
We assess in the actual dwelling, because a bathroom you own and a bathroom you rent in a unit block present completely different problems and only one of them is easy to change.
Out of the flat and into the street
Where it is relevant we follow the whole route out: the hallway, the lift, the entry door, the ramp, the walk to transport. Independence in a unit block is decided outside the front door as much as inside it.
The people who see the ordinary week
With your consent we speak with family, carers, support workers and your treating team, who between them see the days you would not describe to a stranger.
Reading what already exists
We go through discharge summaries, specialist letters and earlier allied health reports so the assessment continues the record instead of restarting it.
Recognised assessment tools
Where appropriate we use validated measures such as the WHODAS 2.0, the COPM and the Lawton IADL Scale, so change over time can be shown rather than claimed.
One report that joins it up
Observations, accounts and scores are written up together, with each recommendation traceable to the evidence that produced it.
Read our full assessment methodology, including the evidence standard every recommendation is written to.
One assessment method cannot capture every kind of disability
Physical, cognitive and psychosocial disability produce completely different functional pictures, and each one defeats a different kind of assessment. This is the reason we do not run a single visit and call it evidence.
What a single visit gets right, and what it misses
Physical limitation is the easiest thing to observe. You can watch a transfer, measure a doorway, time a walk. A one-hour visit will usually capture it reasonably well.
What a single visit misses is variability. Pain and fatigue are not constant, and most people are assessed in the morning because that is when appointments are offered. Someone independent at ten can be genuinely unsafe at four, and a report written from the morning describes a person who does not exist for half the day.
So we assess at more than one point, and we ask specifically about the end of the day and the end of the week.
The gap between can and does
Cognition is where single-visit assessment fails most often, because a person can frequently perform a task correctly when prompted, watched and cued by an assessor sitting beside them.
The difficulty is rarely the task itself. It is initiating it without a prompt, sequencing it in the right order, noticing when it has gone wrong, and doing it again tomorrow without someone there. None of that is visible in a demonstration.
That is why we speak to the people who are actually there through the week, and why we look at what has quietly stopped happening rather than only what can be performed on request.
Capacity that moves
Psychosocial disability is the one most likely to be underestimated on paper, because capacity fluctuates and the person is often assessed on a day they were well enough to attend an appointment.
Motivation, initiation, tolerating other people, managing a routine, dealing with correspondence, leaving the house at all: these can be intact one week and gone the next, and an assessment that catches a good week reports a person who needs very little.
We look for the pattern over time rather than the state on the day, and we ask the support network about the weeks that went badly, because those are the ones the plan actually has to cover.
This is why our method has several avenues rather than one. In-home observation catches the physical and environmental reality. Community observation catches what falls apart outside a familiar setting. Conversations with the people around you catch what happens across a whole week, including the parts nobody performs for a visitor. Documentary review sets it against the clinical history. Standardised tools anchor it to something objective. No single one of those is sufficient on its own, and for most people more than one kind of disability is in play at once.
What makes our Parramatta assessments different
There is no shortage of OT providers across Western Sydney. These are the things worth asking any of them.
Evidence from several directions
One visit is one angle. We combine what we observe, what the people around you describe and what the existing reports establish, and we say where they disagree.
Local to Parramatta
We work across Parramatta, Harris Park, Westmead, North Parramatta, Granville, Merrylands, Northmead and the wider City of Parramatta, and we come to you.
Reports a planner can act on
Written against the reasonable and necessary criteria, with the reasoning visible, usually delivered within 2 to 3 weeks depending on complexity.
We assess the building, not just the person
Parramatta has far more apartment living than most of our service area. Lifts, narrow doorways, shared entries and strata rules decide what is actually possible, and a report that ignores them recommends things that cannot be delivered.
Children through to older adults
Our AHPRA-registered occupational therapists assess every age group, choosing tools to suit the person.
Your team stays in the loop
With your consent we keep your support coordinator, GP and treating team updated as the assessment progresses.
What you receive at the end
Where you live in a unit or apartment, the report distinguishes what can be changed inside your own lot from what would need building or strata approval.
Where things stand now
A clear account of your circumstances and how they have changed, written for a reader who has never met you.
Tool scores explained
Results from the measures used, with a plain-English note on what each one tells you.
Area-by-area ratings
A rating for each area assessed, so the pattern of difficulty is visible at a glance.
Barriers in the dwelling
What in the home or the building is creating the difficulty, separated from what is the person or the condition.
What we recommend, and what is approvable
The supports proposed, with modifications marked as inside-the-lot or requiring strata or building approval.
Reasoning a delegate can follow
Findings written against the reasonable and necessary criteria, with the reasoning on the page.
What the report unlocks in a plan or a review
For Parramatta participants an FCA is usually the document a planner leans on hardest. These are the places it does the work.
- ✓ Access requests: sets out the everyday impact in concrete, observed terms
- ✓ Plan reviews: evidences what has changed, which matters most after a hospital admission
- ✓ External review (ART): gives the Administrative Review Tribunal independent evidence rather than a restatement of the file
- ✓ Equipment and modifications: sets out what the dwelling needs, and what is actually approvable
- ✓ Returning home safely: identifies the risks that decide whether living independently stays realistic
Assessing someone who lives in a unit or apartment
More of Parramatta lives in apartments than anywhere else we work, and it changes what a useful report has to say.
A standard home assessment assumes a house. It asks about the step at the back door and the layout of a bathroom you own. In a unit block, half the barriers sit outside your front door: a lift that is sometimes out, a shared entry with a heavy door, a laundry in the basement, a bin area down an unrailed ramp. None of that is inside the flat, and none of it is yours to change.
So we assess the whole journey, from the bed to the street. That is where the real risk usually is, and it is routinely missed by an assessment that never leaves the apartment.
We also mark which recommendations are inside your own lot and which touch common property, because those are completely different propositions. A grab rail in your own bathroom is straightforward. A handrail on a shared ramp needs the owners corporation, and a plan built on the assumption it will be approved can stall for months. Saying so in the report is not pessimism, it is the difference between a recommendation and a plan.
A Parramatta assessment, start to finish
A worked example of the approach, from referral to report.
Getting home safely after a hospital stay, Parramatta
This is a worked example, written to show how we would approach an assessment of this kind. It does not describe a real person or a real assessment. Funding outcomes depend on individual circumstances and are decided by the funder.
The situation
Consider an adult in Parramatta who has spent several weeks in hospital after a fall and a period of deconditioning. Discharge is approaching, the family are anxious about the person going home alone to a first-floor unit, and the existing plan was written when they were considerably more mobile.
What we would do
We would assess in the unit itself, before discharge where that is possible and again once the person is home. We would watch the tasks that decide whether living alone is safe: getting on and off the bed and toilet, showering over a hobless but slippery floor, and carrying anything at all while using a stick. We would time how long it takes to reach the front door, because that matters if someone knocks or an alarm sounds.
We would look hard at the building. In a unit like this the lift may be reliable while the internal bathroom door is too narrow for a frame, the laundry sits in a shared basement, and the bins are down a ramp with no handrail. With consent we would speak with the family and the discharge team about what support is actually available in the first fortnight, which is usually the riskiest period. We would use the WHODAS 2.0 and the Lawton IADL Scale so the change from the previous plan is measurable rather than asserted.
What the report would set out
Three things that are often blurred together, separated: what the person cannot yet do but would regain with rehabilitation, what needs equipment or a modification, and what genuinely requires support-worker hours. It would also flag which modifications sit inside the lot and which need strata approval, so nobody builds a plan around a change the owners corporation was never going to allow.
Cost, and the funding that covers it
A functional capacity assessment in Parramatta is charged by the hour, at the NDIS occupational therapy price of $193.99 per hour in 2026-27, based on the time the assessment and report take. See how OT is priced for a full breakdown.
| Funding type | What it means |
|---|---|
| NDIS – plan-managed | Your plan manager pays our invoices from your plan. The most common option. |
| NDIS – self-managed | You manage and pay invoices directly from your plan funding. |
| Home Care Package (Levels 1–4) | Occupational therapy for older adults, funded through your package provider. |
| CHSP | Entry-level aged care support, subject to eligibility. |
| Medicare | Up to five allied health sessions a year with a GP care plan (a gap may apply). |
| Private | Pay directly, no referral required. |
For NDIS participants, an FCA is generally funded from the Capacity Building – Improved Daily Living budget, depending on your plan. Funding is not guaranteed, so check with your support coordinator or planner.
Functional capacity assessments across Parramatta and Western Sydney
We are a mobile service and come to you throughout Parramatta (2150) and the surrounding suburbs, including Harris Park, Westmead, North Parramatta, Rosehill, Granville, Merrylands, Northmead, Oatlands, Telopea and Dundas.
Functional capacity assessments in Parramatta: your questions
Do you offer NDIS occupational therapy in Parramatta?
Can you assess someone living in an apartment or unit?
What happens if a modification needs strata approval?
Can you assess before someone is discharged from hospital?
Which suburbs around Parramatta do you cover?
How long does the assessment take, and when does the report arrive?
Is the assessment funded by the NDIS?
Is there an age range you work within?
Request a functional capacity assessment in Parramatta
Send a referral or an enquiry below, or call 1300 316 664. Tell us whether it is a house or a unit and we will plan the visit around it.
Assessments that come to you, in Parramatta
Talk to our mobile OT team about a functional capacity assessment in Parramatta. No obligation.
Make a referral or call 1300 316 664