A plan arrives. Forty-odd pages of funding lines, stated supports, and goals written in the third person. The family reads it twice, three times. Highlights the parts they understand. Files the rest in a drawer or a Dropbox folder. Then the work starts — finding providers, booking appointments, tracking what each one is doing, asking why progress notes haven't come through, getting ready for the next plan review.
Every system in the room is set up for someone else. The plan management software is for the plan manager. The roster app is for the SIL provider. The clinical write-up tool is for the OT. None of them are for the family. The family is the data source: the person who answers the questions, signs the forms, attends the meetings. They are not the user.
Compass changes who the user is.
The asymmetry families inherit
The information flow in NDIS works one way. The family gives information to providers. Providers turn it into reports, plans, progress notes, audit evidence. That work product belongs to the provider — it sits in their system, formatted for their workflow, retained for their compliance obligation. When a family wants the same information back — say, for a new OT, or for the plan review — they have to ask. Sometimes pay for an extract. Sometimes wait two weeks.
This is not a bad-faith problem. It is a software problem. Provider tools are built first because providers pay for software. Family tools are built last, or not at all, because families do not. The result is the asymmetry: the provider has a complete picture; the family has fragments.
What we built
Compass takes the four pieces of the NDIS workflow that families actually run themselves and puts them in one place, on the family's account, theirs to keep.
The plan, structured
Funding categories, stated supports, goals, plan review dates — pulled out of the PDF and into a structured view the family can search and filter. A plan-review checklist tracks what evidence the family will need at the next review (provider reports, progress notes, goal outcomes) so the meeting is not the first time anyone goes looking.
The team, mapped
Every provider — SIL, OT, support coordinator, plan manager, allied health — listed with their contact details, their role, and what part of the plan they sit against. Linked providers can sync evidence directly into the family's Compass — via email invitation for SIL providers and Support Coordinators, via a Connect ID handshake for OTs on Scrive. Unlinked providers are still tracked, just manually.
Goals, with progress
The four to eight goals in the plan, broken down into the smaller outcomes the family is actually tracking week to week. Progress notes attach to the goal they relate to — not buried in a date-ordered timeline that loses meaning after a month.
Documents and appointments, kept
The plan PDF, assessment reports, equipment quotes, OT recommendations, school documents, medical letters — all in one folder, all encrypted, all the family's. Appointments across the team in one calendar view. None of it lives on a provider's server; it lives on the family's account.
Clearline Connect: a bridge, not a wall
Most family-side tools have a choice to make: be a closed island that holds the family's data and forces every provider to email PDFs in, or be an open back-door that lets any provider write to the family's record. Compass takes a third path.
From Compass's Care team panel, the family emails an invitation to a provider they trust. The provider's app (Aura OS for SIL providers, Pilot for Support Coordinators, Scrive for OTs writing reports, more on the way) can then push specific evidence into the family's Compass — a progress note, a report, a goal outcome — only with the family's explicit consent, only into the section the family allows.
The family always sees what came in, who from, and when. Revoke a link from Care team and it breaks immediately. The provider keeps their side; the family keeps theirs.
(Note: the original version of this post described Connect IDs as the user-facing handle. Since 2026-05-27 Compass families, SIL providers and Support Coordinators connect by email; Connect IDs remain in the backend and in the Scrive ↔ Aura interop flow.)
Why this matters at plan review
The hardest part of a plan review is assembling evidence from five or six providers in time to argue for the supports the participant actually needs. Compass turns that into a single export: every linked provider's evidence, every goal outcome, every funding line used or unused, in one PDF the support coordinator can take into the meeting.
Why Compass is free
Compass costs nothing to use. The family does not pay. There is no premium tier, no upsell, no advertising. The reason is simple: the family is not the customer in the wider Clearline Health system. Providers are. Aura OS is paid software for SIL providers. Scrive is paid software for OTs. Compass exists so the participant side of the system is not left behind while the provider side gets the tools.
If Compass had a paywall, families who most need it — first-time NDIS plans, complex support needs, low-resource situations — would not get it. So it doesn't.
What's next
Compass is on the web today at clearlinehealth.com.au/compass. The native Android app is in Google Play Production review and the iOS build lands once our Apple Org migration completes. Both are free, both bundle the same feature set as the web app, both keep the family's data on their account.
The roadmap from here is more about depth than breadth: better goal-tracking templates for common disability types, deeper integration with provider apps via Connect, an offline mode that survives the patchy mobile coverage many regional families live with. Less new surface, more useful in what's already there.
If you are a family member running an NDIS plan and any of the above sounds like the thing you've been doing in spreadsheets and folders for months: try Compass. It takes about ten minutes to set up.
If you are an OT, support coordinator, or SIL provider with families who would benefit: share the Compass page with them, or — from your provider tool — email-invite the family at the next planning meeting.