Submission No 126

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

Organisation: Galuma-li Maaru

Date Received: 18 September 2026

Submission to the Select Committee on Foundational and Disability Supports Available for Children and Young People in New South Wales

Submitted by Galuma-li Maaru
Contact Johnny Ribeiro, General Manager
Authorised by Helen Ribeiro, Director

Contact details support@galumalimaaru.com.au | 02 5772 3108

Date 15 September 2026

Executive summary

This submission reflects Galuma-li Maaru’s early experience working alongside people and families in Toomelah and Boggabilla. Its central message is simple: a referral is not an outcome. For a child to benefit, the family must be able to understand, reach, trust and remain connected with the service pathway.

• Distance, transport costs, limited local specialist services and the NSW-Queensland border can make nominal service availability very different from practical access.
• Historical experiences of being dismissed, passed between services or left without follow-up have reduced confidence in systems for some families. Trusted local navigation can be the difference between a referral being issued and a child actually receiving support.
• Early observations from Galuma-li Maaru suggest that local presence and trusted relationships can increase willingness to ask questions, seek assistance and engage with health and disability pathways. These observations are early and are not presented as proof of long-term outcomes.
• Existing local capability, including experienced early childhood professionals, should be combined with visiting and telehealth allied health rather than overlooked in favour of fly-in/fly-out service models alone.
• Existing community infrastructure may also form part of the solution. Familiar local spaces, including school facilities outside school hours and potentially suitable community buildings, could support playgroups, small-group developmental activities, visiting clinicians and family engagement closer to home.
• Thriving Kids and future foundational-support commissioning provide an opportunity to build Aboriginal-led, place-based approaches for thin-market communities and to measure whether children actually receive and benefit from support.

Galuma-li Maaru would be willing to provide further information or give evidence to the Committee if invited.

About Galuma-li Maaru

Galuma-li Maaru is a community-based disability support provider working with people and families in Toomelah, Boggabilla, Moree and surrounding communities in northern New South Wales.

Galuma-li Maaru has been developed through a partnership between Helen and Johnny Ribeiro and local community members Glynis and Maxine McGrady. Glynis and Maxine are business partners in the development and operation of Galuma-li Maaru, and the longer-term intention is for both to become formal owners as the organisation develops.

We include this because it is important to understanding the model Galuma-li Maaru is trying to build. Our intention is not simply to establish an organisation outside the community and deliver services into Toomelah and Boggabilla. We want to work in genuine partnership with Toomelah and Goomeroi people, building sustainable local capability, employment and services while drawing on external professional expertise where it is required.

Galuma-li Maaru currently works with people with disability and their families through support coordination, direct disability supports, practical navigation and connection with health, allied health and other services. We are also exploring dedicated early childhood, developmental and family supports following approaches and discussions about unmet needs for preschool and school-aged children in Toomelah.

We welcome the opportunity to contribute to this inquiry because many of the barriers being considered by the Committee are clearly visible in the communities in which we work.

A service existing does not mean a child can access it

For families living in Toomelah and Boggabilla, the central question is often not whether an appropriate service technically exists somewhere within the health, disability or education system. The question is whether the child and family can realistically access it and remain engaged with it long enough for it to make a difference.

A child may require assistance from a GP, paediatrician, occupational therapist, speech pathologist, physiotherapist, psychologist, early childhood professional, NSW Health, Education, the NDIS or another community service. On paper, these services can appear to form a pathway. On the ground, they can become a series of separate systems that families are expected to understand, navigate and coordinate themselves.

A referral may be written. An appointment may technically be available. A provider may appear in a regional directory. None of those things necessarily means the child ultimately receives support.

Geography and transport are structural barriers

There are very limited specialist and allied health services available locally to families in Toomelah and Boggabilla.

For Toomelah, the nearest significant service centre is Goondiwindi, approximately 30 kilometres away, but it is located across the Queensland border. The larger NSW service centre of Moree is approximately 130 kilometres away.

For a family with a reliable vehicle, money for fuel, confidence dealing with health systems and flexibility around work and family responsibilities, those distances may appear manageable. For many families, they are not.

Some households do not have reliable access to a vehicle. Others may have access to a vehicle but cannot easily meet the cost of fuel for repeated trips. A specialist appointment in Moree can mean a round trip of approximately 260 kilometres from Toomelah. If a child requires assessment by several professionals, or ongoing therapy rather than a single appointment, that travel becomes a continuing barrier rather than an occasional inconvenience.

Transport therefore cannot be treated as a secondary issue or simply as the responsibility of the family. If government funds an assessment or intervention 130 kilometres away but provides no realistic means for the child and family to reach it, the service is not genuinely accessible.

Transport support also needs to account for more than kilometres. A parent or carer may need assistance organising the trip, preparing for the appointment, taking other children and family responsibilities into account, ensuring a vehicle is available, meeting fuel costs and responding if an appointment changes at short notice. In some circumstances, practical support may be needed simply to make attendance possible.

The NSW-Queensland border should not become another barrier

The geography of Toomelah and Boggabilla also exposes a problem that conventional NSW service planning can overlook. A suitable clinician or service in Goondiwindi may be far more accessible to a family in Toomelah than the equivalent service in Moree or elsewhere in New South Wales.

For families, the state border is an administrative boundary. It should not determine whether a child can receive timely support. Commissioning, referral and funding arrangements for border communities should allow practical cross-border solutions where the closest appropriate service happens to be located in Queensland.

A system that directs a family substantially further away simply because that service sits within New South Wales does not reflect the lived geography of the community.

Getting to the appointment is only one part of access

Even if transport is available, simply getting a family to an appointment does not guarantee successful engagement. A child might be seen by a GP in or near the community and referred to a paediatrician, speech pathologist, occupational therapist or other specialist. The family may then be asked to travel to another town to meet a professional they have never met, within a system they may not understand and may have little confidence engaging with.

For families who have experienced poor treatment by services in the past, this can be intimidating. Some families may be quiet or reserved when dealing with unfamiliar professionals and organisations, particularly where previous experiences have reduced confidence in

government systems. For others, that apprehension can amount to genuine fear of becoming involved with a system they do not understand or trust.

Without someone they know and trust to explain why the appointment matters, help make the booking, follow up the referral, organise transport, encourage attendance and then assist afterwards, the pathway can stop very quickly.

The referral technically exists.
The service may technically exist.
But the child may never actually receive the support.

Trust, confidence and system knowledge

It is important to acknowledge the historical experience that sits behind some disengagement. People within the community have experienced being dismissed, passed between services, repeatedly referred elsewhere, left without follow-up or made to feel that asking for assistance is an inconvenience.

When this happens repeatedly over many years, it can change people’s expectations of what will happen when they ask for help. People can begin to feel that there is little hope that seeking assistance will result in anything changing.

That should never be interpreted as families not caring about their children or not wanting better outcomes. Nor should it simply be labelled as a failure to engage. It can be the consequence of systems that have not consistently earned people’s trust.

Limited access to clear, practical information compounds the problem. Families may need to understand the roles of GPs, paediatricians, allied health professionals, hospitals, schools, early childhood services, the NDIS, Thriving Kids and community organisations - all of which can have different referral processes, eligibility requirements, forms, waiting lists and responsibilities.

People who work inside these systems can find them confusing. For families who have not previously had to navigate health and disability systems, the process can be overwhelming. A system that depends on families knowing who to contact, which questions to ask, what evidence to obtain, when to follow up and what to do when a referral stalls will inevitably disadvantage people who have had less opportunity to build that knowledge.

This is why practical navigation must be regarded as part of access rather than an optional extra.

A referral is not an outcome

Galuma-li Maaru believes this distinction is fundamental. For communities such as Toomelah and Boggabilla, governments should distinguish between:

a service being theoretically available
and
a child actually receiving and benefiting from that service.

Success should not be measured simply by the number of referrals made. A meaningful pathway should consider whether:

• the family understood why the referral was made
• the appointment was actually arranged
• transport was available
• the family felt safe and confident enough to attend
• the appointment occurred and the family understood what happened
• reports and results were received and explained in a way the family understood
• recommendations and further referrals were acted upon
• relevant professionals communicated with one another, with appropriate consent
• the child continued receiving support after the initial assessment.

Without someone remaining engaged with the family throughout that process, a referral can simply become another piece of paperwork.

Walking alongside the family

In our experience, many families do not need another organisation simply telling them what they need to do. They need somebody they trust to walk alongside them while they do it.

That can mean sitting with a parent and explaining in ordinary language why their child has been referred. It might mean making a telephone call together rather than handing the parent another telephone number. It can mean following up when nobody responds, helping organise transport, preparing for an unfamiliar appointment and making sure the family knows what questions they want answered.

The support must also continue after the appointment. Someone needs to make sure the report arrives, help explain what it means, identify what needs to happen next and ensure the next referral does not disappear into another system.

This type of support should not be seen as creating dependency. Done properly, it builds family knowledge, confidence and capacity. Over time, families become better equipped to ask questions, understand systems and advocate for their children themselves.

The consequences can become intergenerational

The consequences of repeated system failure go beyond an individual missed appointment. Children observe how the systems around their families operate.

If they grow up seeing parents and family members repeatedly struggle to obtain assistance, being passed between organisations or feeling that asking for help achieves little, there is a risk that low expectations of these systems become normalised. The next generation may become less likely to

ask for help, less confident advocating for themselves and more likely to accept unmet need as something they simply have to live with.

For children with developmental concerns, developmental delay or disability, this is particularly concerning. Early intervention depends upon identifying concerns and acting early. Years spent waiting for systems to connect are years in a child’s development that cannot simply be returned later.

Breaking that cycle requires more than adding another service to a directory. It requires helping families experience a system that follows through. When families see that making the call leads to an appointment, that somebody helps them get there, that the professional listens, that results are followed up and that support continues afterwards, confidence can begin to grow.

That experience can change expectations not only for one child, but for siblings, extended family and the next generation.

Early observations from local service delivery

Galuma-li Maaru has only been actively providing NDIS-related support within the community for a short period. We therefore do not suggest that our experience represents long-term evidence or that longstanding access problems have been resolved.

However, some early observations are relevant to this inquiry because they illustrate the effect that local presence and trusted relationships can have on engagement.

Within the first few months of operating, older community members have approached Glynis and Maxine asking for assistance to understand and progress NDIS access applications. Several community members have also made enquiries about possible employment opportunities with Galuma-li Maaru. Health professionals, including nurses and coordinators connected with the Wellbeing and Health In-Reach Nurse program, have begun contacting Galuma-li Maaru about possible support pathways for children and families.

These developments are modest and still very early. What is notable to us is that people are initiating some of these conversations themselves: asking questions about disability support, seeking help with access processes and expressing interest in becoming part of the local workforce.

Helen and Johnny Ribeiro, neither of whom is from Toomelah, have also observed a noticeable change in their own engagement with the wider community. As relationships have developed and they have increasingly been introduced as the business partners of Glynis and Maxine, interactions have become warmer and more open. People are more willing to stop, talk, ask questions and discuss concerns.

We do not interpret this as proof that one organisational model will solve complex and longstanding problems. We do believe it illustrates something important: trust affects whether people engage. Who introduces a service matters. Whether the people behind it are known matters. Whether people believe someone will follow up matters.

The approach from the Wellbeing and Health In-Reach Nurse Coordinator is also an early example of how Health and a locally based community service may be able to work together. Health professionals and schools can identify concerns, specialist clinicians provide assessment and intervention within their disciplines, and a trusted local organisation can help families move between those parts of the system.[3]

Our longer-term intention is to work in partnership with Toomelah and Goomeroi people - listening to what is needed, helping people navigate external systems and progressively building more capability locally. These early observations are one reason we believe that approach warrants consideration.

What a local pathway could look like

A concern might initially be identified by a parent, preschool, school, GP, community health professional or WHIN nurse. With the family’s consent, the child could then be connected to a trusted local child and family practitioner or key worker.

That person could explain the pathway, assist with referrals and paperwork, communicate with relevant services, help coordinate appointments and organise practical access such as transport or supported telehealth. Where specialist assessment is required, the family would be supported to engage with the appropriate clinician.

Following the assessment, the local practitioner would help the family understand the outcome and ensure recommendations were acted upon. Where appropriate, that person could work collaboratively with visiting or telehealth allied health professionals, Health, Education, the NDIS or Thriving Kids services to maintain continuity between specialist appointments.

Developmental strategies could be reinforced through the child’s ordinary routines, play, family life, preschool, school and community participation within the professional scope of the people involved.

This is the difference between creating a referral and creating a pathway.

Existing community spaces could support local delivery

Place-based support does not necessarily require a new purpose-built facility. Toomelah already has community assets that may, subject to community agreement, appropriate approvals and funding, support local child and family programs.

One existing building in Toomelah is currently in poor condition but may have potential to become a local child and family play and development space. Any future use would be subject to agreement about its use, assessment of its condition, refurbishment, accessibility, child-safety requirements and funding. A space of this kind could support supported playgroups, small-group play-based developmental activities, parent and carer sessions, visiting early childhood and allied health supports, and supported telehealth.

Galuma-li Maaru has also had preliminary discussions with the Principal of Toomelah Public School, who indicated that school facilities may potentially be available for programs before or after normal school hours. Any use would require formal school approval and appropriate safeguarding and operational arrangements, but it provides another example of how existing, familiar infrastructure may be used to bring support closer to children and families.

Familiar environments matter. For a young child and family who may be apprehensive about unfamiliar professionals or clinical settings, a supported playgroup or small-group activity in a place they already know may provide a gentler pathway into support. It can also create opportunities for visiting clinicians to work alongside local practitioners and families in the community rather than requiring every interaction to occur elsewhere.

The current NSW Thriving Kids model specifically includes supported playgroups for children aged 5 and under and allied health therapies delivered in individual or small-group, play-based sessions.[2] This makes flexible use of existing community spaces particularly relevant to the design of services in places such as Toomelah.

These possibilities are not intended to replace preschool, school or specialist clinical services, nor do they assume that Galuma-li Maaru has authority to use any particular facility. They illustrate how place-based commissioning could make better use of existing community assets, subject to the necessary agreements, approvals and safeguards.

Professional capability already exists within the community

Remote Aboriginal communities should not be viewed only as places into which professional capability must be imported. Professional knowledge and experience can already exist within the community and should be recognised, retained and developed.

Maxine McGrady is part of Galuma-li Maaru’s local leadership. Her qualifications include Bachelor of Teaching Early Childhood Services - Macquarie University, Sydney NSW (2009); Diploma in Community Recovery: Indigenous Therapies - Southern Cross University, GNIBI, Lismore NSW (2011); Associate Diploma of Child Studies - New England Institute of TAFE, Armidale (1997); and Marte Meo Training (Working with Families) - Maria Arts, Sydney NSW (2006). Her Bachelor of Teaching Early Childhood Services is listed by ACECQA as an approved Early Childhood Teacher qualification.[1]

Her professional experience spans more than 30 years and includes roles as Early Childhood Teacher/Room Leader, Director/Teacher/Authorised supervisor, Toomelah Family Support Worker, Community Engagement Officer, Family & Child Wellbeing Support Worker and Aboriginal Cultural Consultant.

Across these roles, Maxine has worked in early childhood education, family and child wellbeing, community engagement, child safety, health and mental health access, educational outcomes, NDIS supports, and partnerships with government and non-government services. Much of this work has been undertaken in Toomelah, Boggabilla and Moree. Her community involvement has also included the Toomelah Local Aboriginal Land Council, Toomelah Community Council and the Goomeroi Elders Council Toomelah.

Maxine is an example of why local service development should not start with the assumption that all expertise must come from somewhere else. There is already knowledge, professional experience and community connection upon which to build. The challenge is to create funding and service models that recognise and use that capability.

Local capability should complement specialist allied health

Building local capability does not remove the need for specialist allied health professionals. Speech pathologists, occupational therapists, physiotherapists, psychologists, paediatricians and other clinicians remain essential.

The challenge is making their expertise accessible and maintaining continuity between appointments. A practical remote model could combine visiting clinicians and telehealth with locally based early childhood professionals, key workers and appropriately trained therapy assistants.

The specialist clinician would retain responsibility for assessment and clinical decisions within their professional scope. The local practitioner could maintain the relationship with the family, assist with implementation of agreed strategies, observe progress in everyday environments and communicate relevant information back to the clinical team.

Where appropriate, local workers could also be trained and supervised by clinicians to deliver delegated therapy-assistant activities. This would allow scarce specialist expertise to be extended rather than attempting to replace it.

It would also mean that an allied health professional’s involvement does not end when their vehicle leaves Toomelah.

A local workforce creates benefits beyond individual services

Developing local capability also has broader benefits. A locally based workforce provides continuity: families see the same people, relationships are built over time, and workers understand the community and are more likely to recognise when something has changed for a child or family.

Local employment can also increase community knowledge about disability, child development, early intervention and service pathways. As more people gain qualifications and experience, capability remains within the community rather than disappearing when an external contract ends.

For remote communities, service investment should be capable of achieving two outcomes at once: better support for children and families, and greater long-term community capability and employment.

Thriving Kids is an opportunity to design this differently

The introduction of Thriving Kids provides an opportunity to avoid simply reproducing existing service gaps. NSW has identified supported playgroups, family supports and individual or small-group play-based allied health as part of the model, and has confirmed that a second tranche of

procurement is planned from late 2026 to increase Aboriginal-led service models and address gaps in service coverage.[2]

Galuma-li Maaru supports that direction. However, place-based and Aboriginal-led service delivery should mean more than commissioning a provider headquartered hundreds of kilometres away to conduct occasional outreach.

Where appropriate capability exists locally, funding should help strengthen and retain it. Where specialist expertise is not available locally, contracts should support genuine partnerships that combine external clinical expertise with trusted local practitioners.

For Toomelah and Boggabilla, that would create a stronger foundation than relying almost entirely on services travelling in and out of the community.

Recommendations

1. Commission specifically for thin-market communities

Toomelah and Boggabilla should be considered as distinct communities with distinct access barriers rather than simply being absorbed into a very large regional service area. A service should not be considered available merely because a provider is contracted somewhere within the broader region. Commissioning should examine whether families can realistically reach, trust and use the service.

2. Fund local child and family navigation from the point concerns are identified

Families should have access to trusted practical navigation from the point at which developmental concerns are first identified. This should not depend upon the child already having an NDIS plan or formal diagnosis. Funding should recognise the work involved in explaining pathways, making and following up referrals, assisting with paperwork, coordinating providers, helping families prepare for appointments and following through on recommendations.

3. Treat transport as an essential component of service access

Where a child needs to travel for assessment, specialist appointments or therapy, practical transport arrangements should form part of the service pathway. Funding models should recognise vehicle access, fuel costs, distance, repeated appointments and circumstances where a parent or carer requires assistance to attend with the child. Transport planning should begin when the referral is made, not after the family misses the appointment.

4. Allow flexible cross-border service access

For border communities such as Toomelah and Boggabilla, commissioning and referral pathways should recognise the closest practical service regardless of state boundaries. Where an appropriate clinician or service in Goondiwindi is considerably closer than the equivalent NSW service, families should not face unnecessary administrative barriers to using that service.

5. Develop and fund local key-worker models

Locally based early childhood professionals or appropriately skilled practitioners should be funded to provide continuity around the child and family. The key worker should help connect Health, Education, allied health, NDIS, Thriving Kids and community services rather than requiring families to coordinate multiple systems themselves.

6. Support flexible use of existing community infrastructure

Place-based commissioning should allow funding for the safe use, adaptation and, where appropriate, refurbishment of existing community facilities where this improves local access. In Toomelah, this could include school facilities outside normal school hours subject to formal approval, as well as suitable community buildings. Funding models should be flexible enough to support playgroups, small-group developmental activities, visiting clinician outreach, family sessions and supported telehealth without assuming that every community needs a new standalone facility.

7. Combine allied health outreach with permanent local capability

Visiting and telehealth clinicians should be supported to work alongside local professionals and appropriately trained workers. Funding should include collaboration, professional supervision, case conferencing, therapy-assistant development and non-face-to-face coordination. Each specialist interaction should strengthen what can continue locally between appointments.

8. Build and retain a local workforce

Government investment should create pathways for local people to obtain qualifications and employment in early childhood, disability and allied-health-support roles. This may include traineeships, mentoring, professional supervision, therapy-assistant training and pathways into further qualifications. Local workforce development should be treated as part of service sustainability.

9. Measure whether children actually receive support

Performance measures should go beyond referral numbers, provider directories and nominal service availability. Governments should examine successful attendance, follow-up, implementation of recommendations, continuity of support, family understanding and family experience. The relevant question should be: Did the child actually receive the help they needed?

10. Strengthen accountability between systems

Families should not be responsible for ensuring Health, Education, disability and community services communicate with one another. Clear local pathways should identify who is responsible for following up referrals, sharing information with consent, coordinating action and ensuring children do not disappear between systems.

11. Co-design services with communities before contracts are finalised

Toomelah, Boggabilla and other remote Aboriginal communities should be involved before service models and contracts are finalised. Families, local community members, schools, health professionals and locally based organisations understand where existing pathways fail. That knowledge should directly influence commissioning decisions.

12. Recognise trust and relationship-building as legitimate service activity

Funding models need to recognise that effective service delivery in communities with longstanding distrust of systems requires time to build relationships. Engagement, explanation, follow-up and family support are not administrative extras. They are often the work that determines whether the clinical service is accessed at all.

Conclusion

Children living in Toomelah and Boggabilla should have the same opportunity to receive early, effective developmental support as children living elsewhere in New South Wales.

Achieving equity does not necessarily mean delivering exactly the same service model everywhere. In a remote community, equity may require government to do more to overcome distance, transport barriers, workforce shortages, fragmented systems and longstanding distrust.

It may require somebody locally to make the telephone call, explain what is happening, arrange the transport, encourage the family to attend, support them through an unfamiliar process and make sure somebody follows up afterwards. For a family that has repeatedly experienced services not following through, these practical actions can be the difference between another referral that goes nowhere and a child receiving the help they need.

The underlying issue is not a lack of care for children within the community. It is that repeated experiences of systems not delivering can leave people with less confidence and less hope that asking for help will lead to change.

Our early experience suggests this can begin to shift when people are able to engage through relationships they already trust and when somebody remains present to help a process move forward. Those observations should not be overstated, but they reinforce our central point: in communities such as Toomelah, trust and local presence can determine whether a service is accessed at all.

The answer is not another disconnected program. It is a service model built around relationships, continuity, transport, local capability, cultural understanding, professional partnership and genuine accountability for whether the child actually received support.

Galuma-li Maaru believes Thriving Kids and the broader foundational-support reforms provide an opportunity to build that model in Toomelah and Boggabilla. We would welcome the opportunity to participate in further consultation, service design, pilots or partnerships concerning child development, early intervention and foundational supports in these communities.

Johnny Ribeiro
Galuma-li Maaru

References

[1] Australian Children’s Education & Care Quality Authority (ACECQA), NQF approved qualifications - Macquarie University, Bachelor of Teaching Early Childhood Services, ECT qualification. ACECQA qualification listing

[2] NSW Department of Communities and Justice, Thriving Kids - program, procurement and Aboriginal-led service delivery information. NSW Thriving Kids

[3] NSW Health, Wellbeing and Health In-Reach Nurse Coordinator Program - program map and model of care. NSW Health WHIN program