Consultation on the NDIS Access Changes

Submission

Consultation on the NDIS Access Changes Submission

Date: 30 September 2026

Our Commitment to First Nations Wellbeing, Culture, and Self-Determination

We stand in strong support of First Nations Australians, affirming their inherent right to self-determination, cultural preservation, and sovereignty over their land and traditions. We acknowledge that for First Nations peoples, mental health is inseparable from cultural, emotional, physical, and spiritual wellbeing—a holistic understanding maintained through thousands of years of continuous culture.

The Gayaa Dhuwi (Proud Spirit) Declaration Framework and Implementation Plan, launched in Meanjin/Magandjin (Brisbane) on the lands of the Turrbal and Jagera/Yuggera peoples where our office stands, provides a crucial 10-year roadmap. QAMH fully endorses this community-led approach to integrating First Nations leadership, cultural knowledge systems, and healing practices into Australia’s mental health frameworks.

QAMH is committed to supporting truth-telling as a process of acknowledging the histories, lived experiences, and ongoing strengths of First Nations peoples, particularly in the context of mental health. By confronting the impacts of colonisation, intergenerational trauma, and ongoing systemic injustices, we can better address the historical and contemporary factors affecting the mental wellbeing of First Nations individuals and communities.

In this submission, we emphasise the importance of holistic and healing approaches to mental health that incorporate the cultural knowledges, connection to Country, and spiritual practices of First Nations peoples. We are dedicated to ensuring that the principles of self-determination, cultural safety, truth-telling, and holistic health are central to the mental health initiatives and recommendations we propose. Our goal is to help build a future where mental health systems respect and respond to the unique needs and strengths of First Nations Australians.

Acknowledgement of Country

QAMH acknowledges and pays deep respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the Traditional Custodians of the lands and waters across Australia. We honour their Elders past and present, whose knowledge, leadership, and cultural practices have sustained these lands for millennia.

Who is QAMH?

The Queensland Alliance for Mental Health (QAMH) is the peak body for community-based mental health and wellbeing services delivered by non-government organisations (NGOs) in Queensland. We represent more than 135 members and stakeholders, involved in the delivery of these services.

Our purpose is to strengthen, promote, and advocate for community-based mental health and wellbeing service delivery for all Queenslanders, through direct engagement with our members, collaboration with government and statutory bodies, and active participation in policy reform at state and national levels.

QAMH maintains a formal collaboration with Community Mental Health Australia and contributes to the work of Mental Health Australia. We also work with both the National and Queensland Mental Health Commissions.

Our membership gives us direct insight into the experience of people living with mental health challenges, their families, carers, and kin, and the organisations that support them.

Recognition of Lived and Living Experience and Expertise

QAMH honours and affirms the lived and living experience of those who have experienced mental health and wellbeing challenges, suicide, and Alcohol and Other Drug use, and the essential contributions they make to the community mental health sector. We equally recognise the lived and living experience of family, carers, and kin, acknowledging their unique perspectives and contributions.

We acknowledge the courage and strength of those who bring their Lived and Living Expertise into professional spaces and affirm that expertise as an essential foundation for a responsive, effective, and human-centred sector.

Throughout this submission, we use the term “lived and living experience” to reflect that mental health challenges are often ongoing rather than historical, and “Lived and Living Expertise” where we refer to the knowledge, skills and insights that people develop through that experience. Both terms recognise that experiential knowledge is a genuine and valuable form of expertise, not simply a personal characteristic.

QAMH Contact Details

For any further information please contact:

Dr Rosa Flaherty
Chief Executive Officer
109 Logan Road, Woolloongabba QLD 4102
Email: ceo@qamh.org.au | Web: www.gamh.org.au

Definitions

Psychosocial supports are non-clinical, trauma-informed, recovery-oriented services that support people experiencing mental health challenges to live independently and safely in the community. They enable people to stay well, avoid crisis and participate in community life. By strengthening wellbeing and social participation, they also reduce pressure on hospitals and emergency services, making them a cornerstone of a sustainable mental health system.

Community-Based Mental Health Services delivered by the NGO sector

This sector occupies a unique and critical position within the broader mental health system. These services address the complex realities of distress shaped by trauma, poverty, isolation and other social determinants, providing practical support with housing, relationships, employment and social inclusion. These services are critical for:

• People who are eligible for the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) and those who are not
• Individuals facing barriers to accessing mainstream mental health services
• People whose needs are significant but not primarily clinical.

Introduction

QAMH welcomes the opportunity to comment on proposed changes to NDIS access. We support a sustainable Scheme in which access decisions are clear, consistent, transparent and fair. These objectives must be considered against the significant decline in access for people with psychosocial disability.

Data shows that the access rate for applicants with a primary psychosocial disability fell from 56% in 2021–22 to 31% in the first six months of 2025–26. Over the same period, the rate for applicants aged 25 and over, moved only from 58% to 55%. The National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIA) reports no change to how access has been assessed and says it is still working to understand the drivers of the declinei. QAMH considers these drivers must be understood and publicly reported so that reform does not reproduce or embed existing inequities.

The future access process must respond to the characteristics of psychosocial disability, including episodic and fluctuating impairment, recovery and diverse experiences of functioning. It should be disability-informed, rights-based and person-centred; preserve autonomy and self-determination; recognise multiple forms of evidence; provide practical navigation support; and be designed, tested and evaluated with people with Lived and Living Experience. It must also work equitably for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, culturally and linguistically diverse communities, and people in regional, rural and remote areas.

NDIS access reform must also be considered within the broader psychosocial support system. People who are found ineligible for the NDIS, or who transition out of the Scheme, may still require significant psychosocial support. Where the access process directs people towards mainstream or Foundational Supports, those supports must exist, be accessible and

be adequately funded, including through a properly resourced community mental health and wellbeing sector.

Question 1: Do the draft guiding principles provide the right foundation for a future NDIS access process?

Guiding principles for the future NDIS access process

QAMH broadly supports the seven draft guiding principles as a foundation for the future NDIS access process. For people with psychosocial disability, the principles’ effectiveness will ultimately depend on how they are translated into practice, including whether the resulting access process reflects the nature and lived experience of psychosocial disability.

Rights, participation and co-design

QAMH strongly supports Principle 1: Aligned to the NDIS Act and the human rights of people with disability, including its explicit recognition of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD). For this principle to meaningfully guide the new access process, it must be operationalised across the entire access and decision-making pathway. Clear safeguards and accountability mechanisms should demonstrate that rights including autonomy, non-discrimination, participation, inclusion, choice and control are upheld in practice.

QAMH also supports Principle 2: Informed by lived experience, including people with disability, families and carers, and welcomes the inclusion of Lived and Living Experience, diversity and First Nations expertise in the current Technical Advisory Group and broader consultation process. QAMH recommends strengthening the principle from being “informed by” lived experience to a commitment to genuine and ongoing co-design throughout the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of the new access process. This would align with the NDIS Review, which called for genuine design with people with disability at all stages.ii

Co-design should deliberately include people identified in the NDIS Review Supporting Analysis as experiencing barriers to access, including people with cognitive or psychosocial disability, First Nations peoples, people from culturally and linguistically diverse communities, people with low levels of literacy, and applicants without family or informal supports. iii It should also include people living in regional, rural and remote communities, where QAMH’s own engagement has identified additional barriers associated with geography, service availability and access to appropriate supports and expertise.iv

For First Nations peoples, genuine co-design should also reflect Australia’s commitments under the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, including the rights to self-determination, participation in decision-making, and involvement in developing and determining health and social programs.v

Genuine and representative co-design is essential to ensuring the access process is fit for purpose, delivers on the intent of the guiding principles and supports the long-term sustainability of the Scheme. Designing the process around the needs, experiences and realities of the people it is intended to serve can strengthen the accuracy, consistency and integrity of access decision-making and reduce the risk of unintended consequences. This is

important for people with psychosocial disability, where the NDIS Review identified longstanding challenges in how access and planning processes respond to their changing needs.ii

Evidence-based, consistent, and person centred

QAMH supports the intent of Principle 3: Evidence-based and consistent, but considers that its implementation will require particular care for people with psychosocial disability. Greater consistency in access decision-making is important, but consistency should not be achieved through standardisation that fails to recognise differences in how disability presents. This is important for psychosocial disability, which can present very differently between individuals and within the same person over time, including in the nature, severity and functional impact of impairment.vi This principle will need to be balanced with the other guiding principles to ensure that greater consistency does not come at the expense of person-centred, equitable and disability-informed decision-making.

QAMH also recommends that Principle 3 explicitly include timely decision-making. An access process should deliver decisions that are not only evidence-based and consistent, but made within reasonable timeframes, recognising that delays can prolong uncertainty and access to appropriate supports.

QAMH strongly supports Principle 4: Person-centred and strengths-based. This is consistent with recovery-oriented approaches to psychosocial disability, which recognise recovery as personal and individual, and support people to exercise choice, pursue their goals and live meaningful lives.vi In the context of access for people with psychosocial disability, however, a strengths-based approach must not result in a person’s strengths, coping strategies or periods of stability being interpreted as an absence of disability or support need.

Equity, accessibility and proportionality

QAMH strongly supports Principle 5: Equitable, inclusive and safe. An equitable access process should recognise and respond to differences in people’s circumstances, experiences of disability and ability to engage with the process, so that these differences do not create barriers to fair access. This may require different approaches, adjustments and supports for different people and communities, rather than identical processes or requirements.

This is important for people with psychosocial disability, who the Independent NDIS Review identified among those experiencing the greatest barriers to access.i As outlined in our response to Question 3, these barriers can interact directly with the nature and impacts of psychosocial disability. An equitable process should ensure that a person’s ability to navigate the process does not itself become a barrier to demonstrating eligibility.

QAMH also supports Principle 6: Transparent, proportionate and accessible. The future process should minimise unnecessary administrative and evidentiary burden and provide appropriate assistance to people who need support to navigate it, as set out in our response to Question 4. Access should not depend on a person’s capacity to navigate administrative requirements or meet standardised evidentiary requirements where these are not necessary to make a sound access decision.

For Principles 5 and 6 to be meaningful in practice, concepts such as cultural and psychological safety, accessibility and proportionality should be clearly defined and operationalised.

Accountability and continuous improvement

QAMH supports Principle 7: Continuous quality improvement, but considers that continuous improvement requires clear governance and accountability for implementing all seven guiding principles.

A monitoring and evaluation framework should be established from the outset, with measures linked to each principle and clear governance arrangements specifying responsibility for implementation, oversight, and reporting. This should include transparent public reporting, appropriate independent oversight, and clear mechanisms for findings and emerging issues to trigger review and refinement of the access process.

Monitoring should examine both how the process operates and the outcomes it produces, including whether particular disability groups or communities experience different barriers or outcomes. For psychosocial disability, this should include whether the process is delivering equitable access and appropriately recognising and responding to the nature of psychosocial disability.

Governance and evaluation should include ongoing and meaningful engagement with a diverse range of stakeholders, including people with Lived and Living Experience, people found ineligible for the NDIS, people from priority groups, families and carers, disability representative organisations, and mental health and community sector organisations. This should ensure that different experiences of the access process, emerging barriers and systemic implementation issues can be identified and inform continuous improvement.

Embedding these arrangements from the outset would give the principles practical effect and provide a clear line of accountability between the commitments made, how the access process operates in practice, and the action taken where it does not meet those commitments.

Question 3: What do we need to consider when designing an access decision-making process that is fair, consistent, transparent, disability-informed and evidence-based?

Disability-informed

For QAMH, a disability-informed access process is one designed and implemented with an understanding of how disability may shape a person’s interaction with the process itself, and how the process may in turn affect whether their disability and functional impacts are accurately understood and assessed. The NDIS Review recognised that access outcomes can be influenced by a person’s capacity to navigate the system and obtain supporting evidence.iii

For people with psychosocial disability, episodic and fluctuating functioning, trauma, distress, cognitive or communication difficulties, and co-occurring challenges such as housing instability or financial hardship may affect their ability to navigate requirements, provide

information or accurately convey their functional impacts at a particular point in time. The process should anticipate these interactions rather than require people to overcome barriers it creates or compounds.

This requires accessible information and communication, proactive reasonable adjustments, flexibility in how and when people participate and provide evidence, and the ability to involve trusted supporters. Consistent with the NDIS Review, people should also have access to practical navigation support throughout the access process, including assistance to understand requirements, identify and obtain relevant evidence, and connect with other supports where needed.iii A person’s communication style, administrative capacity or presentation at a particular point in time should not be treated as a proxy for functional capacity.

Psychosocial disability capability should extend to everyone involved in the access process, including those providing navigation support, gathering or interpreting evidence, conducting assessments, making decisions and communicating outcomes. This should be supported by defined competencies, role-specific training and guidance, supervision and access to psychosocial disability expertise, developed and evaluated with people with Lived and Living Experience.

Embedding these principles would support more accurate, consistent and equitable access decisions, while helping to address longstanding challenges in how the NDIS access process has recognised and responded to psychosocial disability.

An evidence-based decision-making process

Consistent with the NDIS Review’s recommendation for an iterative and inclusive approach to design and testing, the new access approach should be specifically tested with people with psychosocial disability.iii

Evidence or validation for one population should not be assumed to apply to another. Testing should reflect the diversity of psychosocial disability, including episodic and fluctuating impairment and people from groups experiencing access barriers. It should examine the access process as a whole, including assessment methods, thresholds, guidance and decision-making, with meaningful involvement of people with Lived and Living Experience alongside appropriate research, clinical and sector expertise.

Limitations or uncertainty identified through testing should be addressed before implementation at scale, with ongoing evaluation supporting further refinement. This would provide Government with greater confidence that standardisation is producing evidence-based, accurate and consistent access decisions, rather than simply more uniform ones.

Question 4: How could the access decision-making process, including referral pathways, be designed to reduce administrative burden and make it easier and more equitable for people with disability, their families and carers to understand what information is needed and how decisions are made?

Build navigation and practical assistance into the access pathway

Navigation should be a core design feature of the access process, rather than assistance people must independently seek. This is important for people with psychosocial disability, where episodic or fluctuating functioning, distress, cognitive or communication difficulties and co-occurring challenges may affect a person’s capacity to initiate connection with and navigate complex requirements and coordinate evidence across services. The NDIS Review similarly recognised the importance of navigation support and recommended specialist psychosocial navigation with appropriate expertise and trauma-informed practice.ii

Navigators should provide flexible, person-centred support that enables people to understand and engage with the access process in the way that best reflects their circumstances, preferences and support needs.

Design the process around shared responsibility for evidence

Responsibility for assembling the evidence required for an access decision should not fall entirely on the applicant. The NDIS Review’s Supporting Analysis identified the cost and time involved in collecting information as barriers to access, with these barriers particularly affecting people with psychosocial disability. iii QAMH considers that where additional evidence is required that cannot reasonably be obtained by the applicant, the Scheme should facilitate and fund its collection.

The process should accept multiple forms of relevant evidence, including longitudinal and functional evidence from the person, treating practitioners, community mental health and psychosocial support services, and others with established knowledge of their functioning. Evidence should be weighted according to what it can establish, rather than privileging specialist or clinical evidence by default.

Build proportionality into assessment requirements

The access process should begin with already available evidence and identify what, if anything, remains necessary to make a sound access decision. Where existing evidence is sufficient, no further assessment should be required; where gaps remain, additional information or assessment should be targeted to those gaps rather than requiring applicants to complete a standard set of assessments.

For psychosocial disability, decisions about what further assessment is required should account for episodic and fluctuating impairment and the limitations of point-in-time assessment. The NDIS Review Supporting Analysis identified that existing access and planning processes have not responded well to the changing needs of people with psychosocial disability.iii Assessment requirements should therefore be tailored to the evidence already available and what remains necessary to determine access, avoiding

duplication while ensuring sufficient information is available to understand functional impact over time.

Question 5: What should be considered to ensure the access decision-making process and referral pathways work well for all disability cohorts, including people with communication, cultural, cognitive, degenerative, fluctuating, episodic or complex support needs?

For QAMH, effective referral pathways require supported connection rather than passive referral. People navigating the access process may need support to connect with mainstream, Foundational and community-based supports, regardless of whether they ultimately become NDIS participants. For people with psychosocial disability, this may require proactive and flexible support to navigate multiple service systems and establish connections with appropriate services.

The effectiveness of referral pathways ultimately depends on appropriate supports being available. Referral pathways should therefore be designed alongside the services and systems to which people will be referred, with clear responsibility for supporting connection and identifying where appropriate services are unavailable. This must be accompanied by sufficient investment in Foundational Supports and community-based psychosocial supports so that changes to NDIS access do not outpace the capacity of the broader support system.

Government should monitor whether referrals result in people successfully connecting with appropriate support, including for people found ineligible for the NDIS. This would provide visibility of gaps between systems and help ensure that referral pathways operate as a genuine connection to support rather than simply transferring responsibility from one system to another, or leaving people without appropriate support.

Government should invest in the infrastructure, coordination and relationships needed to create effective pathways between systems, rather than shifting responsibility for navigating fragmented services onto individuals and their families.

Question 6: What factors and evidence should be considered when determining whether an impairment is permanent or likely permanent, including whether appropriate treatment is likely to improve the functional impact of an impairment?

Permanence and appropriate treatment must align with the guiding principles

QAMH has concerns about the use of “all appropriate treatment” as part of determining permanence. Similar concerns have been raised across the disability community, including that the requirement could create pressure to undertake treatment or impose additional costs on people with disability and their families.vii While amendments to the legislation have introduced additional safeguards, QAMH considers that careful implementation will be important for people with psychosocial disability.

For people with psychosocial disability, ongoing treatment, recovery and permanent impairment are not mutually exclusive, and treatment decisions are highly individual. An access process should not create pressure to pursue treatment primarily for the purpose of establishing eligibility for disability support.

Any application of the “all appropriate treatment” requirement should be narrowly and clearly defined and consistent with individual autonomy, informed consent and self-determination. The existence of a possible treatment should not, by itself, indicate that an impairment is not permanent, nor should people be expected to pursue every conceivable treatment

Permanence should be considered over time and across circumstances

Permanence should be assessed through the person’s self-report, impairment and functioning over time, including its duration and trajectory, periods of deterioration and stability, treatment responses, and the role of supports in maintaining functioning.

For psychosocial disability, episodic or fluctuating functioning means a period of improvement or stability should not, of itself, indicate that an underlying impairment is temporary.

Recovery and permanence are not mutually exclusive

Treatment that supports recovery, improves functioning or maintains stability should be distinguished from treatment reasonably likely to remedy the underlying impairment. People with permanent psychosocial disability may continue to benefit from treatment throughout their lives.

The possibility of improvement should therefore not, by itself, be inconsistent with permanence. Assessment should consider the likely magnitude and durability of improvement and whether treatment is reasonably likely to remedy the impairment.

Appropriate treatment must be considered in the context of the individual

The existence of an evidence-based treatment should not, by itself, establish that an impairment is not permanent. Assessment should consider the person’s treatment history and response, adverse effects, contraindications, clinical appropriateness and the likely effect of further treatment for that individual.

Treatment must also be realistically accessible, considering factors such as cost, wait times, workforce availability, geography and culturally safe and appropriate care. People should not be disadvantaged because treatment is unavailable in practice, nor required to pursue every conceivable treatment. Informed decisions about treatment, including those based on previous experiences, risks and individual circumstances, should be respected.

Permanence should be informed by multiple forms of relevant evidence

For psychosocial disability, no single assessment or point-in-time presentation will necessarily establish permanence. Relevant evidence may include the person’s own account; longitudinal, clinical and functional evidence; evidence from family, carers, kin or trusted supporters; and evidence from community mental health and psychosocial support services with established knowledge of the person.

Evidence should be weighted according to what it can establish. Clinical evidence may be relevant to diagnosis, treatment history and prognosis, while people and services with longitudinal knowledge may provide important evidence about everyday functioning and fluctuation.

Taken together, the evidence should establish the likely long-term nature of the impairment and functional impact, and what appropriate and realistically available treatment can reasonably be expected to achieve for that individual.

The NDIS interface and sustainability of community-based psychosocial supports

Broader system capacity and NDIS sustainability

The sustainability of the NDIS cannot be considered in isolation from the broader system of supports available to people with psychosocial disability. The NDIS was designed to operate as one part of a broader ecosystem of disability, health and community supports. The NDIS Review similarly concluded that strengthening supports outside the Scheme is necessary both to meet the needs of people with disability and to support the long-term sustainability of the NDIS.ii

Significant gaps in psychosocial support already exist outside the Scheme. Australian Government analysis estimated that, in 2022–23, 493,600 people aged 12–64 with moderate or severe mental illness required psychosocial support but were not receiving it through the NDIS or other government-funded programs.viii This represents substantial existing unmet need before accounting for the potential impact of changes to NDIS access.

This is important in the context of current NDIS reforms. Evidence provided by the Department of Health, Disability and Ageing to the Senate inquiry in June 2026 indicated that modelling underpinning the reforms assumed approximately 240,000 existing participants would exit the NDIS by 2031, with a further 110,000 people who may otherwise have entered the Scheme expected not to do so.ix

For people with psychosocial disability, this requires attention to the availability and capacity of community-based psychosocial supports. Where changes to NDIS access result in people relying more heavily on supports outside the Scheme, those supports must be adequately funded, available and accessible in practice. The existence of a program or referral pathway is not sufficient if appropriate support cannot actually be accessed when it is needed.

This is important not only for equity and continuity of support, but for the sustainability objectives underpinning the reforms. If people whose needs are not met by the NDIS cannot access appropriate support elsewhere, reform risks shifting unmet need between systems rather than addressing it. Conversely, a well-resourced and connected system of community-based, Foundational and mainstream supports can help ensure people receive support at the appropriate level while preserving the NDIS for people with permanent and significant disability.

A sustainable NDIS therefore requires a sustainable system of supports around it. Access reform should be sequenced with investment in, and monitoring of, the capacity of supports outside the Scheme, including psychosocial supports, so that changes to access do not outpace the development of the services people will be expected to rely upon.

Recommendations

In response to the proposed reforms to the NDIS access process, QAMH makes the following recommendations.

Guiding principles, rights and accountability

1. Embed the seven guiding principles throughout the access process, with clear requirements for their application to people with psychosocial disability.
2. Embed rights, self-determination and Lived and Living Experience in design and implementation, through ongoing co-design with diverse communities and specific mechanisms for First Nations leadership and participation.
3. Establish clear governance, monitoring and accountability, including defined responsibility, transparent reporting, independent oversight and mechanisms for findings to drive continuous improvement.

Disability-informed access

4. Design the access process to recognise and respond to how psychosocial disability may affect a person’s ability to engage with the process, with appropriate accessibility, flexibility, reasonable adjustments and support built into the pathway.
5. Build psychosocial disability capability across the NDIS access workforce, through defined competencies, training, guidance, supervision and access to appropriate expertise, developed and evaluated with people with Lived and Living Experience.
6. Ensure decisions reflect the nature of psychosocial disability, including episodic and fluctuating impairment, and do not treat point-in-time presentation, communication style or ability to navigate the process as proxies for functional capacity.

Evidence, navigation and assessment

7. Provide practical navigation assistance throughout the access process and establish shared responsibility for obtaining evidence, including by facilitating and funding additional evidence where it cannot reasonably be obtained by the applicant.
8. Enable eligibility to be demonstrated through multiple forms of relevant evidence, without disproportionate reliance on clinical or specialist evidence.
9. Apply proportionate assessment requirements, avoiding unnecessary assessment while obtaining sufficient information to accurately understand disability and functional impact.

Permanence and appropriate treatment

10. Ensure any application of the “all appropriate treatment” requirement is narrowly and clearly defined and protects autonomy, informed consent and self-determination, without creating pressure to pursue treatment primarily to establish NDIS eligibility.

11. Assess permanence longitudinally, recognising that episodic or fluctuating functioning, recovery, improvement or periods of stability do not, of themselves, mean that a psychosocial impairment is not permanent.

12. Assess the relevance of treatment on an individual basis, considering treatment history and response, likely benefit, risks and adverse effects, clinical appropriateness, individual circumstances and whether treatment is realistically accessible.

Testing and implementation

12. Test and validate the access process specifically with people with psychosocial disability before implementation at scale, examining how assessment methods, thresholds, guidance and decision-making operate together and using findings to inform implementation and ongoing refinement.

Referral pathways and broader supports

13. Embed supported referral and connection throughout the access pathway, with navigation assistance to connect people with appropriate mainstream, Foundational and community-based supports, including continued assistance for people found ineligible for the NDIS. Referral pathways should be developed alongside receiving services and monitored to ensure they result in successful connection to appropriate support.

14. Ensure changes to NDIS access are implemented alongside sufficient investment in Foundational Supports and community-based psychosocial supports, so that reforms do not outpace the availability and capacity of the services people will be expected to rely upon.

i National Disability Insurance Agency. (2026). Quarterly report to disability ministers: Q2 2025–26. Australian Government. NDIS quarterly reports 2025–26 ii Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. (2023). Working together to deliver the NDIS: Independent Review into the National Disability Insurance Scheme final report. Australian Government. NDIS Review final report iii Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. (2023). Working together to deliver the NDIS: Independent Review into the National Disability Insurance Scheme final report: Supporting analysis. Australian Government. NDIS Review supporting analysis iv Queensland Alliance for Mental Health (QAMH) (2025), Distance at Heart, Communities Apart. 2025 Regional, Rural and Remote Roadshow Report. https://www.qamh.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/QAMH-2025-Regional-Rural-and-Remote-Insights-Report.pdf v United Nations General Assembly. (2007). United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (A/RES/61/295). United Nations. Official UN record vi National Disability Insurance Agency. (2021). Psychosocial disability recovery-oriented framework. Australian Government. NDIA Psychosocial Disability Recovery-Oriented Framework vii Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee. (2026). National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026. Parliament of Australia. Official Senate Committee report viii Health Policy Analysis. (2024). Analysis of unmet need for psychosocial supports outside of the National Disability Insurance Scheme: Final report. Australian Government Department of Health and Aged Care. Official report PDF ix McElroy, N. (2026, June 12). Inquiry examining NDIS spending cuts told 240,000 people would exit the scheme. ABC News. ABC News article