National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 Submission 1144
My name is and I live in Queensland. I am the mother of autistic children, a carer, and the owner of a small disability support business, . I am writing regarding the NDIS Future Generations Bill 2026 because I am deeply concerned about the impact it will have on families, self-managed participants, and small community-based providers.
I oppose aspects of the Bill that increase reassessment pressures, reduce flexibility for self-managed participants, and create additional registration and administrative burdens on small providers. I am also deeply concerned about the direction of tighter eligibility requirements and the increasing expectation that families simply absorb more pressure when systems fail to adequately support disabled children.
There is no schooling system that adequately meets my children’s needs, and I know I am not the only parent in this situation. My children are not considered “disabled enough” to qualify for Special Schools, yet they are also not adequately supported within mainstream schooling. Families like mine are left stuck in the middle, trying to force children into systems that were never built for them.
After years of fighting for support, attending meetings, advocating constantly, trying different schooling options, managing therapies, and reaching complete burnout, I made the decision to withdraw my children from school so I could educate them myself. In doing so, I had to stop working in the traditional sense because the responsibility of caring for and educating my children fell entirely onto me.
At the same time, we still needed to survive financially on one income, while paying $750 per week in rent and managing the increasing costs that come with disability, therapies, transport, appointments, and everyday life. So I started my own NDIS business.
I did not start this business because it was easy or profitable. I started it because I had worked in disability support for five years and had seen firsthand the poor quality of care many vulnerable children and families are receiving. I knew what good support should look like. I knew the importance of consistency, emotional safety, trust, flexibility, and genuine understanding of neurodivergent children and families. I believed people deserved better care than what I was seeing around me.
Now, instead of supporting small providers who genuinely care and are deeply connected to their communities, the increasing registration requirements and administrative burden risk punishing businesses like mine. Small home-based providers are often the people delivering the most personalised and flexible care, especially in regional communities where services are already limited. We are the providers filling gaps where larger systems often cannot.
What is also being missed in these discussions is the impact on families as a whole. Parents are fighting every single day just to keep their children safe, regulated, educated, supported, and included, while also trying to survive financially and emotionally themselves. Many of us are already burnt out long before we even reach the NDIS, and then we enter a system where we often feel unheard, constantly questioned, and forced to repeatedly prove our children’s needs.
Now many families are facing the reality that their children may no longer be considered “disabled enough” to qualify for support at all, despite already struggling to cope. We already rely on Mental Health Care Plans through Medicare, not just for ourselves but now for our children as well. I recently had to send one of my children to stay with their grandparents in Victoria for two weeks because I desperately needed support and relief.
We reached out to services such as Carer Gateway looking for help, but no one could provide the level of support our family actually needed. In the end, the only way we have been able to continue functioning is through accessing 50 hours per week of In Home Care Childcare, subsidised by the Government through the Additional Child Care Subsidy.
This is where I believe the Government needs to seriously reconsider what “value for money” actually means.
National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 Submission 1144
Families who cannot access adequate early support do not suddenly stop needing help. The pressure simply shifts somewhere else. It shifts into Medicare-funded mental health care plans, emergency respite, childcare subsidies, hospital admissions, mental health units, crisis services, school refusal, workforce loss, and long-term carer burnout. The costs do not disappear. They are simply moved into different parts of the system, often at far greater emotional and financial cost.
Recently, my partner was admitted to a mental health unit due to the level of stress and demand our family is under. I was also seeing a psychologist weekly due to suicidal ideation caused by burnout and overwhelm. However, like many families, we eventually reached a point where we could no longer afford ongoing mental health support for ourselves.
Like many carers and parents, my own health and wellbeing are always the last priority because there is simply no room left to focus on ourselves. Eventually this creates even greater strain on the healthcare and mental health systems when carers reach breaking point and collapse completely. Preventative support for families is not wasted money it is value for money long term.
At some point, we need to stop looking only at the individual child in isolation and start recognising the wellbeing of the entire family unit. When parents collapse under the pressure, children suffer too. Supporting disabled children properly means supporting the families carrying the responsibility of caring for them every single day.
I ask the Committee to recommend amendments that protect self-management, preserve participant choice, reduce unnecessary reassessment burdens, and ensure small community-based providers are not pushed out by excessive registration and compliance requirements. I also ask the Committee to recognise the broader impact these changes have on carers, parents, siblings, mental health systems, education systems, and regional communities.
Families like mine are already at breaking point. The NDIS should support families to survive and participate in society, not push them further into crisis.
Sincerely,