National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 Submission 1059
My name is .
I am the mother of a child currently accessing the NDIS, as well as a University qualified preschool teacher in Inner Western Sydney who has referred children to the NDIS and taught many children with a variety of disabilities.
My connection to the proposed NDIS Bill is as follows; My son accessed NDIS funding from 2021, after a diagnosis of ASD level 2. We used his funding to access Speech Therapy, Occupational Therapy and Music therapy. He went from having a significant speech delay, unable to maintain any peer-to-peer social interaction, having many sensory meltdowns a week, being ‘lost in his own world’ to now being in the mainstream school, with beautiful friends and thriving. It is very possible that without the support that we received at that critical time he would not be where he is today. Of course, he will always have challenges however the impact on his life from NDIS funding has been huge and it means that I expect that he will live a so called ‘normal life’, be able to work a job and contribute to society. Through parenting my son, I have also come into contact with families of children with a wide range of disabilities.
Also as a preschool teacher I have had over 15 years of experience teaching young children, several of whom each year have had a disability. I have seen how families can begin to move from crisis to having a more stable life when accessing support from NDIS.
After reading the proposed Bill I have several concerns about how it will impact many people in my community negatively, that I would appreciate the committee considering.
My preschool has been visited in the last month by a NDIS worker to assess a child who told us that the child’s needs were within what a parent should be providing for this child. As a teacher I have many years of experience with children and families and I know when a child’s needs are above what a family can support. Already language from this Bill is being used to prevent children from accessing the support they need. The flow on affects will be huge, with mental health impacts on families as well as children progressing into school without the skills they need to learn.
This Bill also says that the NDIS will pursue informal community support for people with a disability rather than funding support. I am concerned places such as early childhood services, schools, charities and NGO’s will bear the brunt of this without being given adequate resources. For example, my preschool has a name amongst allied health professionals in the area as a preschool that is supportive and enriching service for children with a disability. As a teacher I do so much for the children in my class, often giving informal Speech and Occupational therapy within my daily routine as I try to improve the skills of children in my class who are now on a waitlist for supports. However, I am not a qualified allied health professional; I also have 19 other children in my classroom that I need to support in a normal
National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 Submission 1059
teaching role. As teachers we are already becoming burnt out by the needs of children in our community who do not have any other support. I am concerned that if this Bill is passed as is, that an assessor will see that children attend our preschool and decide they don’t need funding. In the last 6 months I have seen children in my preschool who would benefit from similar levels of support that my son received being knocked back from NDIS. This is frightening for me, as we know the impact that early intervention has on the long-term quality of life on children.
The need for support does not go away, it only gets passed onto unqualified and overburdened people in the community. The NDIS assessor I mentioned previously said that they would do things to increase our preschool’s ability to support the child. She gave several suggested strategies, all of them were something we had already implemented. It became quickly apparent the NDIS could not provide us with individualised support as they promised. When we have previously had OT’s and other allied health professionals come in to support children they know well, they have been invaluable in giving us skills to support these children within the classroom. If this Bill moves ahead we at preschool will be left on our own to try and support children with disabilities. Instead it is imperative that NDIS continue to fund individual support for people with disabilities and not rely on informal community support alone.
I am also concerned that the Bill says that a family needs to exhaust other options before coming to the NDIS. Currently there are children in my class that are being denied NDIS with the reason given that there is the potential of Thriving kids coming or being asked to use Community Health. Children that clearly need Speech or OT support are being told by Community Health that the wait is at least 60 to 70 weeks. This Bill will create a class system within our community where parents that can afford to take the children to private Speech therapy and OT are able to do so and get early intervention, while those that cannot access these supports are left with no early intervention. The Bill must take into account a families ability to access other options, not just that options exist.
I am concerned that the wording in the Bill focuses only on considering the safety of a person with a disability rather than the whole quality of life. People with a disability deserve more than just safety. They deserve the ability to go out into society in a safe manner with qualified carers. Children with disabilities deserve to be in a family that is loving and thriving. With this Bill’s focus on cost cutting families will have to forsake relationships, mental health and quality of life. People with a disability deserve to have access to allied health professionals who can build skills so they can participate fully in school, work and be an active part of community. I am concerned that if this Bill is passed that people with a disability will lose access to funding that will give them quality of life, and that the follow-on impact on families supporting a child with a disability will be huge. This Bill considers cost cutting by increasing parents’ capacity to
National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 Submission 1059
support their child with a disability, but without funding. The families I am in daily contact are already at full capacity; by asking them to increase their ability to care for their child with a disability something else will have to give. This may be a parent’s ability to work, the needs of siblings, the mental health of the family, isolation of everyone in the family. I am concerned that families will see no relief for their struggles, and we will see more children surrendered to the state, and more tragedies such as the murder/suicide of whole families. Even if situations do not to go to this extreme the impact of lowering funding to only therapy does not just affect them. It also affects the people around them, lowering their quality of life and increasing mental health concerns exponentially all, of which will have flow on financial realities for the government. The NDIS must continue to support capacity building and community support so that families can build their capacity to care for their child with a disability.
The language in this Bill around what is reasonably expected of a parent of a child with a disability as opposed to what is expected of a parent of a child without a disability of the same age must be better defined. Does the committee expect that a parent who has had to drastically reduce their hours at work because childcare is not available for the needs of their child as normal parental experience? Does the committee expect normal parenting to include waking several times in the night to care for a child’s complex medical needs well into teenage years? Does the committee believe that a parent having to protect children from a violent sibling is a normal parental experience? I believe many would say it is not, but the wording in this bill is unclear and can allow for funding cuts to be made that could support families in these situations.
One thing I support in this bill is the need for all Supported Independent Living providers to be registered. This Bill has been advertised to the general public as stopping fraud in the disability services. Most of this bill does not actually address this at all, this is the only part that will make a difference to prevent fraud. Please consider all the harm that the other parts of this Bill will bring about. It is possible to prevent fraud without taking funding from participants in a way that this Bill is doing.
I have grave concerns about this bill. I can see in my community that if this Bill is passed that there will be many negative impacts in my small circle alone.
I ask the committee to consider my lived experience when reviewing this Bill.