NDIA Accountability Project

Supporting stability: Coordination and connection for Autistic people and families

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1 October 2026

NDIS SCC Consultation Team
Department of Health, Disability and Ageing.
GPO Box 9848
Canberra ACT 2600

Submitted online.

Dear Consultation Team,

Submission to Support Coordination and Connection Consultation.

Amaze is a leading autism organisation, driving change so that Autistic people and their families can live their best lives.

We welcome the opportunity to respond to the NDIS Support Coordination and Connection (SCC) consultation and to highlight issues of particular importance to Autistic people, families and carers.

We strongly support the submission of the Australian Autism Alliance and endorse its key concerns and recommendations regarding the future design and delivery of SCC. The Alliance’s submission reflects what we consistently hear from Autistic people and families through our community engagement and national Autism Connect helpline. In particular, we support its focus on ensuring eligibility reflects the support needed to maintain stability, preserving participant choice and control, protecting trusted relationships, strengthening quality and safeguarding, maintaining access to specialist expertise, and implementing reforms in a way that does not disrupt effective supports or leave people without the coordination and navigation assistance they need.

We also support the Alliance’s emphasis on ensuring that people who are not eligible for ongoing SCC can still access timely, skilled navigation and escalation support at critical points of change, and that no participant loses effective coordination before an appropriate replacement pathway is demonstrably available and working for them

We support the Alliance’s recommendations that:

  1. Eligibility, assessment, commissioning and funding arrangements should recognise and preserve the factors that maintain stability. Eligibility for SCC should be based on a person’s need for coordination and connection, rather than diagnosis or assumptions about complexity. Many participants’ apparent independence or stability is supported by significant but often invisible scaffolding, including family, trusted relationships, specialist expertise and effective coordination. Reforms should recognise the supports required to maintain stability, rather than waiting for stability to fail before assistance is available.
  2. Choice, continuity and trusted relationships should be retained wherever possible. Trusted coordinators often play a critical role in supporting wellbeing, communication, safety and successful implementation of supports. Continuity should be recognised as an important safeguard, not simply a participant preference.
  3. The new model should strengthen quality, capability and safeguarding without reducing flexibility or individualisation. National consistency should establish minimum standards and safeguards while retaining the flexibility needed to respond to individual circumstances and support needs.

T 03 9657 1600
E info@amaze.org.au
W amaze.org.au\

Ground Floor, 678 Victoria St
Richmond VIC 3121
PO Box 374, Carlton South VIC 3053

  1. SCC should support effective coordination, navigation and connection across systems. The model should support effective coordination and navigation across the NDIS, mainstream and community service systems. Participants should receive practical assistance to connect with services rather than simply being directed elsewhere. Referral and escalation pathways should be designed to ensure people successfully access the supports they need.
  2. The model should provide effective safeguarding, escalation and navigation support, including for participants who are not eligible for ongoing SCC. Safeguarding should not rely solely on participants recognising and reporting problems themselves and should include effective escalation pathways and early identification of emerging risks. An accessible, autism-informed navigation and escalation pathway should also be available for people who do not meet SCC eligibility but need skilled assistance at critical points of system change, including plan reassessments, funding reductions, provider changes and review processes.
  3. SCC workers should meet a national consistent competency framework that includes strong disability-specific expertise, including autism capability. All SCC workers should be required to meet a nationally consistent core competency framework, complemented by specialist capability relevant to the participants they support. This should include contemporary autism understanding, neuro-affirming and trauma-informed practice, communication and AAC, executive functioning, Autistic burnout, supported decision-making and safeguarding.
  4. Commissioning arrangements should preserve choice, diversity and specialist expertise. A commissioned network model should be considered in preference to sole-provider approaches, ensuring participants retain meaningful choice and ongoing access to autism-specific, disability-led, culturally specific and other specialist organisations.
  5. Regional, rural and remote communities must have equitable access to high-quality coordination and specialist expertise. Virtual delivery may improve access for some participants, but it should not become a default (anywhere in Australia) or substitute for participant choice, or appropriate service provision. Geographic location or regional boundaries should not result in reduced service quality or prevent participants from accessing specialist expertise where it cannot reasonably be replicated locally. Participants must always have choice and control over how SCC has delivered, i.e. in person or online.
  6. The Alliance’s Systems That Work – Readiness Before Reliance framework should guide implementation of SCC reforms. Existing arrangements should not be withdrawn until replacement pathways can demonstrably meet participants’ needs, with sufficient capacity, capability, accessibility and intensity.
  7. Transitions to any new SCC model should be carefully managed to protect participants and maintain continuity of support. Transition arrangements should prioritise continuity, warm handovers and preservation of trusted relationships wherever possible.

We encourage the Australian Government to carefully consider and adopt the recommendations outlined in the Alliance’s submission and to continue working closely with people with disability, representative organisations and service providers throughout the design and implementation of these reforms.

Please contact me by email at david.tonge@amaze.org.au or by phone on 03 9657 1600 if we can assist by providing further information or answering any questions you may have.

Yours sincerely,

David Tonge
Chief Executive Officer