Submission No 118

INQUIRY INTO FOUNDATIONAL AND DISABILITY SUPPORTS AVAILABLE FOR CHILDREN AND YOUNG PEOPLE IN NEW SOUTH WALES

Organisation: Specialist Teaching and Research Date Received: 18 September 2026

Inquiry into Foundational and Disability Supports Available for Children and Young people in NSW

NSW LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL SELECT COMMITTEE ON FOUNDATIONAL AND DISABILITY SUPPORTS AVAILABLE FOR CHILDREN AND YOUNG PEOPLE IN NEW SOUTH WALES

Submission: September 2026

Table of Contents

Background

Summary of Recommendations

Response to specific Terms of Reference:

• (a) the role of services and supports on a child’s overall development, health and wellbeing

• (e) opportunities to increase engagement across sectors and improved collaboration across both government and non government services, including Aboriginal Community Controlled Organisations, early learning services, educational settings and health services

• (g) workforce issues in the child development and early childhood intervention sectors, including workforce demand and the availability, quality and capacity of existing workers

Background

Introduction

Thank you for the opportunity to submit a response to the inquiry into Foundational and Disability Supports Available for Children and Young people in NSW.

This submission primarily addresses three of the terms of reference (a, e, & g) and is informed by domestic and international research and best practice, as well as the stories of families and community members who engage with our organisation. The submission also addresses relevant recommendations made by the Select Committee on Foundational and disability supports available for children and young people in NSW (the Committee) in its interim report, and the NSW government’s response to these recommendations.

We welcome the opportunity to meet in person to discuss our recommendations with the Committee and other stakeholders.

Contact:

About Special Teaching and Research (STaR) Ltd.

Special Teaching and Research (STaR) Ltd (formerly STaR Inclusive Early Childhood Association) was founded in 2001 by Dr. Coral Kemp, parents, and professionals from Macquarie University Special Education Centre. Initially launched as a pilot program in 2002, STaR pioneered providing early intervention where it matters most- in regular early childhood education and care (ECEC) services, supporting early childhood educators to include children with disability or developmental delay. The pilot program has evolved and is now known as the Early Years Program (EYP). In 2020, STaR broadened its vision to include lifelong special education, addressing the lack of educational opportunities for adults with disabilities in post-school settings.

STaR’s Early Years Program (EYP)

The EYP has four core activities:

• Families are supported to enrol their child with developmental delay/autism/disability at a local STaR-affiliated ECEC service. No diagnosis is required, and no Medicare card or visa status is needed. Additional services, including family workshops, information, advice, referral, and advocacy, help ensure ongoing, wrap-around support for the whole family.

• Children with developmental delay/autism/disability have an Individual Learning Plan (ILP) that aligns with the family’s priorities, the Early Years Learning Framework, NDIS, and allied health/therapy goals. This plan is updated at least three times each year at a meeting with input from all stakeholders (ECEC educators, family, STaR Special Educator, and other professionals working with the child & family).

• Educators at the STaR-affiliated ECEC service receive ongoing professional development, coaching and mentoring. During onsite coaching and mentoring visits, a Special Educator supports them to develop and implement the child’s ILP. ILPs serve as evidence of the ECEC service making “reasonable adjustments” under the Disability Discrimination Act (1992), so children with disability or developmental delay can participate on the same basis as their peers. An ILP is also a tool for reflection and improvement within the service. Qualified STaR Early Childhood Educators provide release time for the ECEC service educators, ensuring educator/child ratios are maintained to enable time off the floor.

• A Transition to school program is provided in the year before school, including support for the school enrolment process, additional school orientation visits, and information sharing with the receiving school. Support for the family, school, and child in Term 1 & 2 of the school year is also provided.

Funding The EYP is partially funded (approx. 20%) by the Australian Department of Social Services (DSS) under the Commonwealth’s ‘Families and Children’ Activity,

Children and Parenting Support program. The other 80% of funding comes from fundraising, donations and philanthropy.

The EYP is delivered at NO COST to the family, their child or the STaR-affiliated ECEC service. The normal fees of the ECEC service are payable by the family directly to the service.

Capacity building for the ECEC sector and families

In addition to our EYP, many educators and student teachers have attended STaR professional development courses and have been coached and mentored ‘on the ground’ by our Special Educators. Between 2018 and 2022, STaR delivered Sector Capacity Building support to educators and leaders in 20 inclusive preschools in the northwest of Sydney as part of the NSW Department of Education (DoE)’s Disability Inclusion Program. Since September 2021, over 3000 early childhood educators from early childhood services (including long day care, preschool & family day care settings) across NSW have attended STaR professional development webinars funded by the NSW DoE through the Sector Development Program. We also facilitate a weekly MyTime peer support group for parents and carers of children with a disability, chronic medical condition or developmental delay, on behalf of Playgroup NSW, and deliver Stepping Stones Triple P seminars.

Research

STaR is committed to embedding research evidence into our practice and contributing to the evidence base in early childhood intervention and special and inclusive education. Our team has published research in peer-reviewed academic journals and regularly presents at national and international conferences.

We believe that everyone, regardless of disability, has the right to learn in an environment and way that fosters their development, and our mission is to make quality special education accessible.

Summary of Recommendations

1. That the NSW government and the NSW Department of Communities and Justice require that foundational supports be delivered in line with the National Best Practice Framework for Early Childhood Intervention.

2. That the NSW government and the NSW Department of Communities and Justice require that all general and targeted Foundational supports are family-centred and strengths-based.

3. That the NSW government and the NSW Department of Communities and Justice require that when supports are delivered in early learning or educational settings, they must be delivered using a capacity-building approach within the learning environments, and not an individual therapy approach involving the withdrawal of children from their natural learning environments, educators, and peers.

4. That Universities offer post-graduate courses specialising in ECI intervention, addressing knowledge, skills and experience in recognised best practice for children with disability and developmental delay.

5. That the NSW government provide support for early childhood educators and allied health practitioners to complete an accredited post-graduate early childhood intervention qualification by providing scholarships to assist with course completion.

6. That the NSW government requires practitioners delivering foundational ECI supports to have a post-graduate qualification in early childhood intervention in addition to an initial early childhood education or allied health qualification, and provides preferential funding for service providers who employ staff with ECI qualifications.

Response to specific Terms of Reference

(a) the role of services and supports on a child’s overall development, health and wellbeing

Foundational services and supports- Early Childhood Intervention (ECI)

When infants and young children with developmental delays or autism who have mild to moderate support needs receive foundational ECI supports early, they are less likely to need intensive supports later. Building the knowledge, skills, and confidence of these children’s families, who will continue to support the child’s development and advocate for what is in their best interests long after any ECI practitioner’s involvement, is a key component of such ECI supports.

Best Practice in (ECI)

Internationally and in Australia, it is widely acknowledged¹ ² ³ that Best Practice in ECI involves appropriately skilled practitioners working in a way that is:

• strength-based
• family-centred
• collaborative
• delivered in the child and family’s natural environment/everyday settings (such as the home, early childhood education and care settings, and schools)
• focused on achieving measurable outcomes for the child and their family through building the capacity of those in the child’s life to support the child’s development, and
• based on the assessment of the child’s strengths, functional skills, and support needs across developmental domains, conducted within natural environments across everyday activities, routines, and interactions.

¹ Division for Early Childhood. (2016) DEC recommended practices with examples. Retrieved from https://www.dec-sped.org/recommendedpractices ² Eurlyaid- The European Association on Early Childhood Intervention. (2019) Recommended Practices in Early Childhood Intervention: A Guidebook for Professionals. Retrieved from: https://www.eurlyaid.eu/eciguidebook-englishversion/ ³ Moore, T., Imms C. et al. (2025) National Best Practice Framework for Early Childhood Intervention. The University of Melbourne. Commissioned by the Commonwealth of Australia’s Department of Social Services.

Best practice guidelines for ECI practitioners were first released in Australia in 2016⁴. Although the NDIS commissioned the development of these guidelines to support the rollout of the NDIS Early Childhood Early Intervention Approach, ECI providers had little incentive to adhere to them. In both the independent review into the NDIS⁵ and the review of Best Practice in Early Childhood Intervention⁶, families reported that they were not receiving ECI services in line with these guidelines.

Recommendations:

• That the NSW government and the NSW Department of Communities and Justice require that foundational supports be delivered in line with the National Best Practice Framework for Early Childhood Intervention.
• That the NSW government and the NSW Department of Communities and Justice require that all general and targeted Foundational supports are family-centred and strengths-based.

(e) opportunities to increase engagement across sectors and improved collaboration across both government and non government services, including Aboriginal Community Controlled Organisations, early learning services, educational settings and health services

Our response to this Term of Reference will specifically address engagement and collaboration related to providers of foundational supports, early learning services and educational settings.

Delivery of foundational supports in schools and early learning services

⁴ Early Childhood Intervention Australia. (2016). National Guidelines for Best Practice in Early Childhood Intervention. ⁵ Commonwealth of Australia. (2023). Working together to deliver the NDIS: Independent review into the National Disability Insurance Scheme final report. ⁶ Dimmock, K., Rees, N., Kakoschke-Moore, S. (2024). Review of best practice in early childhood intervention: Consultation report from the Association for Children with a Disability. The University of Melbourne, funded by and provided to the Commonwealth of Australia’s Department of Social Services.

As noted previously, collaboration and the capacity-building of the adults who spend the most time with the child, and therefore have the greatest potential to influence that child’s development, are key components of ECI. In addition, this support should be delivered within the everyday settings where children live, play and learn – therefore, access to foundational supports in early learning and school settings is vital, and this support must include the capacity-building of educators and teachers. This involves collaborative practice between those delivering ECI supports and educators and teachers working in schools

Children with mild to moderate support needs in early

learning and education settings

In recent years, there has been an increasing awareness within the ECEC workforce that young children with disability and developmental delay have the right to learn alongside their peers in ECEC services. This has been supported by the inclusion of information about the Disability Discrimination Act (1992) and reasonable adjustments in the most recent version of the Early Years Learning Framework for Australia7 and the recent amendments to the Disabilty Standards for Education (2005), involving the formal inclusion of most early childhood education and care services. This means that children with developmental delay are more likely to be enrolled in ECEC services, and this is reflected in what we are seeing ‘on the ground’.

Trends we are seeing:

• Far fewer families are contacting us directly for assistance with placing their child with a disability or developmental delay in an ECEC service.
• Significantly more families, early childhood educators, and other concerned professionals are contacting us with requests for support for ECEC services that are struggling to support children with developmental delays, often exhibiting behaviours that educators find concerning.

What early childhood educators have told us:

• They don’t know how to support the participation and learning of children with developmental delay.
• They feel nervous, stressed, and ill-prepared.
• They want to do the ‘right’ thing, but don’t know how to engage these children.

7 Australian Government Department of Education [AGDE] (2022). Belonging, Being and Becoming: The Early Years Learning Framework for Australia (V2.0). Australian Government Department of Education for the Ministerial Council.

• They can sometimes receive conflicting advice from different ECI professionals, or struggle to link the allied health ‘therapy’ strategies to supporting the child’s engagement within their early learning setting.

What families have told us:

• They have felt pressured by early childhood educators, teachers, or service leaders to seek a developmental assessment or diagnosis of developmental delay, ASD or ADHD for their child. They have been asked to do this so that:
• the service can use it as evidence when applying for support and funding via the Inclusion Support Program, and/or
• the family can apply for an individualised funded support plan through the NDIS.
• Although they have not been explicitly asked to leave the service, they have been made to feel that their child was ‘too hard’ and unwanted.
• They have felt pressured to only leave their children at the service for ‘shorter hours’ or ‘a limited time’ each day.
• Some families have been told that the service or school has received complaints from other parents about their children’s behaviour.

General versus individualised ‘capacity building’

We note that the NSW government did not support Recommendation 13 of the Committee’s interim report, “That foundational supports uphold children’s right to support in their learning and educational setting and be formally embedded within playgroup, early learning and school settings…”, and are disappointed that this recommendation was not supported by the NSW government. The government’s response, indicated that foundational supports delivered under the Thriving Kids model will include group and individual early childhood intervention and allied health therapy for children and that Thriving Kids does not include revision of educational funding mechanism. This indicates a possible misunderstanding of the nature of evidence-based and best practice ECI supports, which should always be delivered in a capacity-building manner as opposed to individual allied health therapy with a child. This is vitally important if the supports are likely to be time-limited, because those adults who spend the most time with the child- their families, early childhood educators and teachers, need to be able to support the child’s development when the therapist or ECI practitioner is not there.

While there are some supports available for the general capacity-building of ECEC workforces, such as the Sector Capacity Building Program component of

the NSW Department of Education’s Disability and Inclusion Program, or the support offered by the federally funded Inclusion Support Program, these usually focus on general strategies targeted to the group of children at the service. Where any ECI professional is working with a child in an early learning or educational setting, they should be working on specific skills that are needed for that learning environment and a large component of this should involve collaboration and information-sharing, and joint capacity-building with the early childhood educators and teachers, because they are the ones who will have the ongoing relationship with the child and family and opportunity to support the child’s practise of those skills within this everyday setting. There is no point in an ECI practitioner delivering ECI services in a school or early learning setting if it involves withdrawal of the child from the learning environment and does not involve collaboration and capacity-building of the educators and teachers in situ, specific to the needs and strengths of the child they will continue supporting.

Recommendation:

• That the NSW government and the NSW Department of Communities and Justice require that when supports are delivered in early learning or educational settings, they must be delivered using a capacity-building approach within the learning environments, and not an individual therapy approach involving the withdrawal of children from their natural learning environments, educators, and peers.

(g) workforce issues in the child development and early childhood intervention sectors, including workforce demand and the availability, quality and capacity of existing workers

As noted in the sections above, families and ECEC services have reported services in line with ECI best practices. It is therefore somewhat unsurprising that analysis of 246 online job advertisements for ECI positions across Australia, collected over a 5-month period, indicated that less than half of the providers advertising ECI positions required successful candidates to have knowledge, skills or experience aligning with the best practice guidelines available in Australia at the time8 (Gavidia-Payne et al., 2024). In addition, very few providers who included role descriptions encompassing best practice components required the successful

8 Gavidia-Payne, S., Zanutinni, J., Carlon, S., & Kemp, C. (2024). Early Childhood Intervention under the National Disability Insurance Scheme: Characteristics and Recruitment Practices of Service Providers. Early Childhood Education Journal. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10643-024-01759-w

candidates to have knowledge or skills in the corresponding area⁹ (Carlon et al., 2025). This indicates that the current Australian ECI workforce is likely to need significant support and training to empower them to deliver best practice ECI supports. There is also evidence that these practices are not sufficiently addressed in university courses preparing early childhood educators and allied health professionals¹⁰. not receiving

Recommendations:

• That Universities offer post-graduate courses specialising in ECI intervention, addressing knowledge, skills and experience in recognised best practice for children with disability and developmental delay
• That the NSW government provide support for early childhood educators and allied health practitioners to complete an accredited post-graduate early childhood intervention qualification by providing scholarships to assist with course completion.
• That the NSW government requires practitioners delivering foundational ECI supports to have a post-graduate qualification in early childhood intervention in addition to an initial early childhood education or allied health qualification, and provides preferential funding for service providers who employ staff with ECI qualifications.

⁹ Carlon, S., Zaunutini, J., Kemp, C., & Gavidia-Payne, S. (2025). Australian Early Childhood Intervention Roles: Are they Reflective of Best Practice and are the Skills, Knowledge, and Experience Sought by Employers Suitable? Infants and Young Children, 38(2), 87-106. Retrieved from: https://journals.lww.com/iycjournal/pages/collectiondetails.aspx?TopicalCollectionId=1 ¹⁰ Carlon, S., Kemp, C., Zanuttini, J. Z., & Gavidia-Payne, S. (2025b). Personnel Preparation for Australian Early Childhood Intervention Roles: Does It Meet Best Practice Standards? Advancing Early Childhood Intervention, Paper presented at the 8th ISEI Early Childhood Intervention Conference, Lisbon, Portugal, 2-5 September.