National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 Submission 1065
Submission to the Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee
Inquiry into the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026
To the Committee,
I am a parent of a child with significant disability support needs, and I am writing to express my concern about the proposed changes to the NDIS and the potential impact they may have on autistic children with complex and high support needs.
For many families, the NDIS is not an optional system. It is essential to maintaining safety, stability, development, and participation in daily life. Any changes to eligibility, assessment, or funding structures therefore have immediate and significant consequences.
My child is autistic and is currently unable to attend school. We have made extensive and sustained efforts to support school attendance, working with professionals and attempting multiple approaches in good faith. Despite this, school attendance has not been possible due to the level of functional impact my child’s disability has on daily life.
My concern about the Bill is that it appears to move toward more structured or standardised assessment and classification processes for determining support needs. While improved consistency in decision-making is understandable as a policy goal, there is concern that more narrowly defined assessment frameworks may not adequately capture the complexity and variability of disability in children, particularly autistic children with high support needs.
Children with disability often present differently depending on environment, stress, sensory load, and developmental stage. There is a risk that if assessments rely too heavily on standardised categories or functional scoring systems, children with significant real-world support needs may be assessed in ways that do not fully reflect their lived experience across home, school, and community settings.
This raises concern about how eligibility and support levels will be determined under any revised framework, and whether children with complex needs may experience changes in classification that do not align with their actual day-to-day functioning.
The lack of detailed publicly available information about how these assessment processes will operate in practice also creates significant uncertainty for families. At present, it is not clear how continuity of supports will be protected during reassessment processes, or how consistency of decision-making will be ensured across different regions and planners.
For families caring for autistic children with high support needs, including children unable to attend school, even small changes in classification or funding access can have major impacts on safety, education access, and family stability.
National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 Submission 1065
While reform of the NDIS is important for its long-term sustainability, it must not reduce clarity, fairness, or appropriate recognition of functional disability. Any changes to assessment or eligibility frameworks must be transparent, evidence-based, and co-designed with people with lived experience. They must also ensure that children with complex needs are not disadvantaged by overly narrow or rigid classification systems.
It is also essential that any transition to new assessment frameworks includes strong safeguards to ensure continuity of supports, and that no participant is placed at risk of losing essential services due to administrative reclassification rather than a genuine change in support needs.
I am not opposed to reform. However, reform must be implemented with full transparency and with the lived experience of disabled children and their families at the centre. At present, there is not enough clarity about how the proposed changes will operate in practice to give families confidence that supports will be maintained for those who rely on them most.
Thank you for considering my submission.
Sincerely,