Submission No 96

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

Organisation: Autism Association of Australia Date Received: 17 September 2026

Further Submission

Foundational and disability supports for children and young people in New South Wales

Further submission to the Select Committee Submitted by Autism Association of Australia

AUTISMAUSTRALIA.ORG.AU

Autism Association of Australia welcomes the opportunity to make a further submission following the Committee’s First Report and the NSW Government’s response. This submission focuses on the design of Thriving Kids for autistic children and their families, particularly the pathways between universal supports, targeted supports and other appropriate services, including the National Disability Insurance Scheme.

OUR CENTRAL CONCERN

Our central concern is straightforward: what happens when a child in Thriving Kids is not thriving?

The answer cannot depend on a family’s ability to recognise insufficient progress, identify the right intervention or navigate another complex system alone. NSW needs a visible and timely process for reviewing progress, clearly telling families when current support is not meeting their child’s needs, and guiding them towards a more appropriate response.

Executive summary

The NSW Government has provided important clarification about Thriving Kids since the Autism Association of Australia (AAA) made its first submission. The program will serve children aged eight and under with developmental delay and/or autism who have low-to-moderate support needs. It will operate within a capped funding envelope, begin delivering some new services from October 2026 and continue to roll out through 2027. Services will include supported playgroups, peer support, parenting groups, early childhood intervention and allied health therapy (targeted supports).

8 and under

Age of the children Thriving Kids is designed for

$1.0743b

Available jointly with the Australian Government over five years, within a capped envelope

Oct 2026

First new services begin, rolling out through 2027

Thriving Kids should also be honest about what it is: a capped, low-to-moderate needs program that will not be sufficient for every autistic child. NSW should say so plainly, rather than let families assume that participation means their child’s needs are being met.

AAA supports earlier access to help without requiring families to wait for a diagnosis. We also support services being available in familiar community settings. However, diagnostic-agnostic entry must lead to support that responds to the child’s assessed needs. A broad entry point should not produce a generic service response. A child’s access to quality early intervention is critical for their long-term well-being and outcomes.

The Government response does not yet explain how children will move between universal and targeted supports, how the intensity of support will be determined, how insufficient progress will be identified and communicated to families, or how families will be guided towards a more appropriate intervention. Where a child may meet the NDIS access criteria, referral to the NDIS should be one available pathway. It should not be the sole focus of the escalation process. Nor does the response provide an adequate answer for children who reach the age boundary while they still require support.

AAA recommends that NSW design Thriving Kids as a pathway rather than a collection of programs. Supported playgroups may be a useful entry point and one component of a broader early intervention response. They should not be represented as a stand-alone, evidence-based autism intervention. Parent education is also valuable, but families must continue to have access to external expertise about the nature and intensity of intervention their child requires.

Recommendations

To ensure Thriving Kids provides an effective pathway for autistic children and their families, AAA makes the following seven recommendations. The remainder of this submission provides the supporting analysis.

Recommendation 1: Publish the complete service pathway

The NSW Government should publish the full Thriving Kids pathway as it launches, not after. Families need to know how a child gets in, how needs are assessed, how they move from universal to targeted support, and how they transition to the NDIS if that’s needed.

Recommendation 2: Create a formal escalation pathway

Every child in Thriving Kids should have access to a timely review when they are not progressing, their needs increase, or their initial level of need was underestimated. Providers should be required to clearly inform families when current support is not meeting the child’s needs, explain which types of intervention should be considered, and assist the family in understanding the available options. Appropriate support should continue while further assessment, referral or an NDIS access decision is pending. Where support is delivered in-reach in a school or early learning setting, the same review and escalation principles should apply, and the protocols governing these arrangements should be published. NSW must also identify the pathway for children whose needs exceed the support available through Thriving Kids but who do not meet NDIS access requirements.

Recommendation 3: Use a multidimensional assessment of need

Decisions about service intensity and escalation should consider communication, adaptive functioning, cognition, behaviour, safety, participation, co-occurring conditions, family circumstances, and the child’s functioning across settings. A diagnosis or a single broad description of severity should not determine the pathway on its own.

Recommendation 4: Differentiate support according to need

Thriving Kids should remain accessible before diagnosis while providing needs-specific pathways after entry, including access to practitioners and programs with autism-specific expertise where indicated.

Recommendation 5: Set evidence and quality standards

NSW should publish minimum evidence, workforce, supervision, safeguarding and outcome requirements for each commissioned service type. Outcomes should be reported separately for major cohorts, including autistic children, and should extend beyond attendance and family satisfaction.

Recommendation 6: Protect continuity at age nine

No child should lose support solely because they turn nine. Exit should occur only when support is no longer required or an appropriate receiving service has accepted the referral and a transition plan is in place. Where NSW does not intend to fund support beyond age nine for a child who still needs it, families should be told this plainly, as a funding and policy decision, not framed as an assessment that their child no longer requires support. Conflating the two leaves children with genuine ongoing needs unsupported, and their families believing the system has judged their child fine when it has simply run out of funding for them.

Recommendation 7: Publish demand and performance data

The NSW Government should publish demand modelling, waiting times, service intensity, expenditure, transition and escalation data, and outcomes by cohort and geography. This should include the number of children referred from Thriving Kids to the NDIS and the outcomes of those referrals.

The Government response clarifies the model but leaves the pathway unresolved

The Committee’s First Report found that the current system is fragmented, difficult to navigate and affected by workforce shortages, geographic inequity and unclear boundaries between mainstream services, foundational supports and the NDIS. Its recommendations included a statewide no-wrong-door navigation model, an early intervention investment framework, a published system map, cross-sector workforce planning and dedicated transition pathways for children turning nine.

The Government supported only Recommendations 11 and 12 in full. It supported eight recommendations in principle, noted four, and did not support Recommendations 3, 4, and 13 concerning whole-of-family wellbeing, transition pathways at age nine, and revised education funding and integration.

The Government response confirms that Thriving Kids will provide time-limited supports to children aged eight and under with developmental delay and/or autism who have low-to-moderate support needs. Children with ongoing specialist disability support needs are not the target cohort. The response also says that clear information will be provided to families about pathways and next steps.

This is an important distinction. Families require more than information about possible pathways. They need to know who is responsible for recognising insufficient progress, how and when progress will be reviewed, when they will be told that the current service is not enough, and where they can obtain expert advice about the intervention their child needs. Funding responsibility may vary. The obligation to identify unmet need and communicate it clearly should not.

Thriving Kids should operate as a pathway

Thriving Kids should also be honest about what it is. It is a capped, state-funded program for children with low-to-moderate support needs. For some children, its supports will be genuinely sufficient. For others, particularly those with more substantial autism-specific needs, it will not be, and it was never designed to be. NSW should say this plainly, rather than allowing families to assume that participation in Thriving Kids is equivalent to receiving adequate early intervention. Where a child’s needs exceed what the program is designed to provide, families should be told clearly and promptly and supported to pursue an appropriate evidence-based intervention, whether through the NDIS, another public service or private provision.

Thriving Kids appears likely to contain at least two layers: broadly available supports that help families enter the system and more targeted supports for children who require additional assistance. That is a reasonable structure. Its success will depend on the movement between those layers.

A family should not need to know in advance whether their child needs a supported playgroup, parent education, allied health support, a more specialised autism intervention or access to the NDIS. The system should make that determination through appropriate screening, assessment and review. It should then help the child move to the appropriate response without repeated intake processes or avoidable delay.

THE PATHWAY IN FOUR STEPS

1 · Entry

Low-barrier entry without a diagnosis, with competent triage

2 · Assessment

A multidimensional profile that sets service intensity

3 · Review

Scheduled progress review against individual goals

4 · Escalation

Honest advice, specialist assessment and supported referral

AUTISM ASSOCIATION OF AUSTRALIA · FURTHER SUBMISSION · NSW SELECT COMMITTEE

Entry and initial assessment

Entry without a formal diagnosis can reduce delay and inequity. It recognises that developmental needs may be visible well before a complete diagnostic process can occur. However, a low-barrier entry point still requires competent triage. Initial assessment should identify the child’s developmental and functional profile, immediate risks, family priorities and the settings in which difficulties occur.

The Government should clarify whether every child will receive a common assessment, who will administer it, what qualifications are required, and how information from parents, early childhood educators, clinicians and other services will be incorporated. The assessment should direct the child to an appropriate service intensity rather than simply confirm admission to a standard program.

Movement from universal to targeted support

If supported playgroups or similar community programs are intended as an initial offer for many families, NSW should publish the criteria and timeframe for movement to targeted support. Families need to know whether targeted support can begin immediately where the child’s needs are already clear, or whether every child must first complete a universal program.

Requiring an autistic child with evident functional needs to complete a standard introductory program before receiving an appropriate targeted response would create delay rather than early intervention. Universal entry should remain available, but it should not become a mandatory holding pattern.

Review and escalation

The pathway must include scheduled reviews and a mechanism for earlier review when concerns arise. Reviews should examine progress against individual goals, participation in everyday settings, emerging risks and whether the service remains appropriate. They should not be limited to attendance, completion or family satisfaction.

The Government should publish escalation indicators. These may include little or no progress despite appropriate participation, loss of previously acquired skills, substantial communication or adaptive impairment, serious safety concerns, significant behaviour that affects the child or others, complex co-occurring conditions, or a need for support that is likely to be ongoing and individualised.

Where those indicators are present, the provider should be required to tell the family that the current support is not adequately meeting the child’s needs, initiate or facilitate further assessment, and explain the available intervention and referral options. Parents should not be left to infer from a lack of progress that the service is insufficient or to determine the appropriate next step without expert guidance.

What happens when a child in Thriving Kids is not thriving?

This question should be answered before the program begins at scale. Some children will enter Thriving Kids before their developmental profile is fully understood. Others may initially appear to have low-to- moderate support needs but show more substantial impairment as expectations increase or as they enter new settings. A child’s needs may also change over time.

When Thriving Kids is not producing adequate progress, the first obligation is to ensure that the family knows the child requires a more appropriate, more intensive or more specialised early intervention response. Families should receive clear information about what is not working, what the child’s assessed needs indicate, and what intervention options should be considered. This obligation exists regardless of which system ultimately funds the next stage of support.

The NDIS may be the appropriate funding pathway where a child meets its access requirements and requires ongoing individualised disability support. Children who continue to meet those requirements should not be moved to Thriving Kids as a lower-cost substitute. For children newly identified through Thriving Kids, a supported route to NDIS access should be available when substantial and enduring functional impairment becomes evident. But an NDIS referral should not become a substitute for honest advice to parents about their child’s need for quality early intervention.

AAA recommends that the escalation pathway include:

a scheduled review after an initial period of support, with earlier review available at the request of the family or provider
published escalation indicators and a documented decision
access to specialist developmental assessment where required
clear advice to the family about the type and intensity of intervention indicated, together with supported referral to appropriate services, including the NDIS where relevant
continuation of appropriate Thriving Kids support while further assessment, referral or an NDIS access decision is pending
a defined contact responsible for assisting the family through the process
a review process where a family disagrees with the decision not to escalate support
monitoring of referral outcomes, waiting times and children who remain without an appropriate service

The same principle should apply where a child is reassessed under current NDIS processes and no longer meets the access criteria. The family should receive a supported transition to an appropriate service rather than a notice and a directory. NSW should clarify whether Thriving Kids will accept those referrals and how continuity will be maintained. Whatever the funding pathway, parents should receive an accurate account of their child’s progress and needs so they can make informed decisions.

Supported playgroups are useful but have a defined role

Supported playgroups can offer an accessible and non-stigmatising point of entry. They may help parents connect with other families, support children’s participation, allow developmental concerns to be observed and provide opportunities to model useful strategies. For some children and families, this may be an appropriate initial or complementary support.

The policy risk arises if a short block of group sessions is treated as the early intervention response for autistic children, regardless of their assessed needs. AAA is not aware of any evidence that a general supported playgroup, delivered as a stand-alone, time-limited program, constitutes an adequate autism intervention for children with significant communication, adaptive, behavioural, or developmental needs.

If NSW intends for supported playgroups to be the universal starting point before children move to targeted services, the Government should explain:

whether children with clearly identified needs can move directly to targeted support
how a child’s needs and progress will be measured
who decides that the universal offer is insufficient
what targeted supports will be available and within what timeframe
whether targeted support can operate concurrently with a playgroup
what happens when a targeted service is unavailable locally
how the model and dosage are supported by evidence for each major cohort

AUTISM ASSOCIATION OF AUSTRALIA · FURTHER SUBMISSION · NSW SELECT COMMITTEE 6

The distinction is important because an intervention may be family-centred and delivered in an everyday setting while still requiring specialist expertise. Accessibility and clinical or developmental appropriateness are separate questions. NSW must satisfy both.

Diagnostic agnostic entry requires needs specific support

Thriving Kids is intended for children with developmental delay and/or autism, and the broader national model emphasises early identification of developmental delay and neurodevelopmental difference. In practice, the program may receive children with a wide range of profiles, including language delay, global developmental delay, autism, ADHD, intellectual disability, emerging behavioural concerns and combinations of these.

AAA supports access based on developmental and functional need rather than requiring every family to obtain a diagnosis first. That does not mean diagnostic information is irrelevant. Once a child enters, the response should reflect what is known about the child’s developmental profile and the evidence relevant to that profile.

A diagnostic-agnostic entry system should therefore provide differentiated pathways. Children should be able to access practitioners with autism-specific expertise where autism is diagnosed or suspected and that expertise is relevant to their needs. The same principle should apply to other developmental and neurodevelopmental profiles.

This matters for workforce planning. A general early childhood workforce cannot be assumed to possess the depth of knowledge required for every child. Commissioning should specify the competencies required for different service functions, access to specialist supervision and the process for consultation or referral when a provider reaches the limits of its expertise.

The capped funding envelope requires transparent demand modelling

The NSW Government has stated that up to $1.0743 billion will be available jointly with the Australian Government over five years and that services must be delivered within a capped envelope. At the same time, diagnostic-agnostic entry is likely to create a large eligible or potentially eligible population.

A capped program is not inherently inappropriate, but the consequences of the cap must be anticipated. If demand exceeds assumptions, pressure may appear through waiting lists, shorter service blocks, greater reliance on group delivery, reduced access to targeted supports or tighter interpretations of low-to-moderate need.

The Government should publish the number of children expected to use each service layer, the assumed intensity and duration of support, workforce requirements, regional allocation method and contingency arrangements if demand is higher than forecast. Without that information, families and service providers cannot assess whether the program is capable of delivering its stated model.

Evidence standards and outcomes must match the service function

The Government supported the Committee’s recommendation for a dedicated prevention and early intervention investment framework and has committed to evidence-based community delivery and monitoring and evaluation. AAA welcomes this commitment. It now needs operational detail.

Different services should be evaluated against outcomes that match their purpose. A playgroup may reasonably measure participation, connection and successful referral. Parent education may measure knowledge, confidence and use of strategies. A targeted developmental intervention should measure progress against the child’s individual functional goals. Attendance and satisfaction are useful measures, but they cannot establish that a child’s developmental needs have been met.

For each commissioned service, NSW should set out who it is designed for, the evidence supporting it, the skills and supervision required of practitioners, the expected duration and intensity, and how progress will be measured. Services should be changed or discontinued when they do not produce the intended outcomes. Where the evidence is still emerging, this should be stated clearly and the service should be evaluated accordingly.

Data should be analysed by developmental profile, service intensity, geography and relevant demographic characteristics. Reporting only an average program outcome may conceal poor results for autistic children or for children with higher needs within the Thriving Kids cohort.

The age boundary creates a foreseeable service cliff

The Committee recommended dedicated transition pathways for children turning nine and for older children eligible for foundational supports. The Government did not support that recommendation. AAA recognises that the immediate Thriving Kids model is directed to children aged eight and under. That makes it more important, not less, to understand what happens when a child reaches the end of the program while still requiring support.

The Government’s commitment to provide information about pathways and next steps does not establish continuity. A list of services cannot ensure that an appropriate service exists, has capacity or accepts responsibility for the child. The risk is especially acute for a child who enters Thriving Kids at seven or eight, begins to show progress, and then reaches the program’s age boundary.

Turning nine should trigger planning, not automatic withdrawal. Exit should be based on an assessment of need and a confirmed transition.

Where the child may require ongoing specialist disability support, the NDIS pathway should begin early enough to avoid a gap. Where another mainstream, community or privately funded service is appropriate, the family should receive clear advice and a supported referral before Thriving Kids closes the case.

The inquiry’s terms of reference cover children and young people, while the Government response is largely confined to Thriving Kids for children aged eight and under. The final report should recognise the foreseeable consequence of that boundary. If appropriate support is not available after Thriving Kids, the pressure will fall heavily on families and schools. Unmet communication, behavioural, adaptive and participation needs are likely to become more consequential through the later primary and secondary school years, affecting learning, attendance, inclusion and family wellbeing. The final report should therefore seek a clear account of the services and transition arrangements that will apply after age eight, even if the design of those services sits beyond the immediate Thriving Kids cohort.

The Government’s response to Recommendation 13 notes that some Thriving Kids services may be delivered in-reach in schools and early learning settings, governed by protocols between the Department of Communities and Justice and the Department of Education. AAA welcomes this. The same visibility this submission seeks for the broader pathway should apply here. Families need to know how a concern identified in a school-based setting is communicated and acted on, and how continuity is maintained if a child moves between an in-reach program and a community-based one. We are not asking NSW to revisit the scope of Recommendation 13. We are asking that whatever protocols the two departments establish be published and include the same review and escalation principles set out above.

Parent capacity building should equip families without replacing expert guidance

The Government supports parent and carer capacity building and identifies parents and carers as critical partners. AAA strongly supports this approach. Parents have primary responsibility for supporting their child in everyday life, and good can improve their understanding, confidence and ability to use helpful strategies at home.

However, parent education should not create an assumption that a parent becomes the expert responsible for assessing the child’s developmental needs or deciding which intervention is appropriate. Parents know their child and must be central to decisions, but they still require access to qualified external expertise to interpret progress, identify concerns and recommend the nature and intensity of intervention required.

Parent programs should therefore be linked to clear clinical or developmental guidance, with a route back to professional review when strategies are not working or the child is not progressing. Evaluation should examine whether parents understand their child’s needs, feel able to support them at home and know when and where to seek further advice. Families should be equipped to make informed decisions, not left to make specialist judgements alone.

Commissioning should preserve specialist capability

Thriving Kids will require collaboration between locally trusted organisations and specialist providers. These capabilities will not always sit within the same organisation. A provider may have strong relationships with local families and expertise in supported playgroups but limited autism-specific capability. A specialist organisation may have high-quality parent capability without operating local venues across NSW.

AUTISM ASSOCIATION OF AUSTRALIA · FURTHER SUBMISSION · NSW SELECT COMMITTEE 8

Commissioning should allow separate service streams, consortia and subcontracting arrangements where these produce a stronger pathway. The assessment of tenders should examine the capability required for each function rather than assuming that geographical footprint is a substitute for specialist knowledge, or that specialist knowledge alone is sufficient for trusted local delivery.

The Government should also avoid bundling unrelated functions in a way that limits participation by highly capable specialist organisations. Clear role definition, shared referral protocols and accountability across partners will be more important than requiring every commissioned organisation to deliver every element of the model.

The Government supported publication of a foundational supports system map and supported an integrated navigation model in principle. It noted rather than supported investment in shared digital infrastructure, stating that priority would be given to direct service delivery and that national information and service-finding measures would also be developed.

A system map is necessary but will not be enough. Families require information about live services, intake criteria, waiting times, referral status and responsibility for next steps. Providers require consent-based methods for sharing information and tracking referrals. National awareness information will not, on its own, connect a NSW family to an available local or specialist service.

NSW should define how national information functions, the Parent and Carer Information Hub, commissioned providers and local entry points will connect. Navigation should be measured by successful connection to an appropriate service, not by the number of directories, webpages or referrals produced.

Conclusion

The next phase must establish how Thriving Kids will work for a child whose needs are unclear at entry, change over time or cannot be met by the first service offered. For autistic children, early access and community delivery must sit within a differentiated pathway that includes autism-specific expertise, appropriate targeted intervention, honest review of progress and timely guidance to families when a different response is required.

Before implementation at scale, NSW should answer one practical question for every family: what happens when a child in Thriving Kids is not thriving? The answer should begin with recognition and disclosure. Parents should be told clearly when their child is not making adequate progress, advised about the intervention the child needs and supported to pursue the available options. Which system ultimately funds that intervention is important, but it should not determine whether families receive accurate information and expert guidance.

AAA would welcome the opportunity to give evidence at a further public hearing and assist the Committee with its continuing inquiry.

About Autism Association of Australia

Autism Association of Australia is a national, not-for-profit organisation founded in 2007. AAA provides evidence-based information, education and advocacy for autistic people and the families who support them. The organisation is led by people with lived experience, including parents of autistic children, and works with autistic people, clinicians, researchers, educators and community organisations.

AAA reaches more than 500,000 website users each year and maintains a national community database of more than 200,000 people. Its resources include Autism: What Next? and the Navigating Autism programs for the early years, school years and adulthood. AAA’s 2025 National Autism Parent and Carer Survey received 1,208 responses. It found that 32.3 per cent of respondents waited more than two years for a diagnosis and 76.6 per cent used a private diagnostic provider. These are national findings and are not presented as NSW-specific data.

AAA participated in an advisory capacity in NSW discussions about foundational supports alongside other sector specialists. We advised that supported playgroups can contribute to an early intervention pathway but should not be treated as a stand-alone autism intervention.

Sources

Autism Awareness Australia, Submission to the Inquiry into Foundational and Disability Supports Available for Children and Young People in New South Wales, 2025.
NSW Legislative Council Select Committee on Foundational and Disability Supports Available for Children and Young People in New South Wales, First Report, Report No 1, February 2026.
NSW Government, Response to the First Report of the Select Committee on Foundational and Disability Supports Available for Children and Young People in New South Wales, May 2026.
NSW Legislative Council, Terms of Reference, updated 5 December 2025.
Autism Awareness Australia, National Autism Parent and Carer Survey 2025. Survey findings cited in this submission are national and are not NSW-specific.

APPENDIX 1

Questions the implementation model should answer

ENTRY

Can children enter without diagnosis, and can children with clearly identified needs move directly to targeted support?

ASSESSMENT

What domains, information and tools determine the child’s initial service intensity?

UNIVERSAL SUPPORT

What is the intended purpose, duration and expected outcome of playgroups and other introductory supports?

TARGETED SUPPORT

What targeted services will be available, who delivers them and how quickly can a child access them?

REVIEW

When is progress reviewed, what counts as insufficient progress and who makes that decision?

ESCALATION

What triggers specialist review, how are parents told that the current support is insufficient, and what intervention and funding pathways are then explained?

CONTINUITY

What support continues while a child waits for assessment, a more appropriate service or an NDIS access decision?

AGE BOUNDARY

What happens when a child approaches nine and still requires support?

REGIONAL ACCESS

What occurs when the appropriate targeted service does not exist or has no capacity locally?

ACCOUNTABILITY

What data will show whether children reach the right service and achieve meaningful functional outcomes?