National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026

Submission 1560

To whom it may concern,

I am writing to express my concerns about some of the proposed changes to NDIS funding. I am an experienced Occupational Therapist who has worked for 22 year with children with multiple and complex diagnosis including ASD, Intellectual Disability, Cerebral Palsy and Fragile X Syndrome.

I am particularly concerned about the proposed funding cuts to participants’ budgets, from 1 October 2026, including:

• a 10 per cent reduction to capacity building daily activity supports
• a 50 per cent reduction to social, civic and community participation supports. These supports help people build skills, maintain routines, stay connected to community and participate in everyday life.

I specifically want to advocate for the needs of children, who with greater neuroplasticity are more able to develop skills to be successful and contributing members of society. I was surprised to find that adults working in group homes were often working on the same goals such as social skills of sharing and emotional regulation that we are working on developing in children. If the children can learn these skills when they are young then it will savie time and funding later in life.

It is important that NDIS supports are individualised to the persons unique circumstances. This should include the functional needs of the person, their strengths, their informal supports and their capabilities for learning. For one person a parent coaching session is sufficient while another is in foster care and the therapy needs to be direct to the child as the foster mother does not have capacity to implement the strategies at home. The complexities of familiy situations and multiple diagnosis is not easily understand utilisying standardised tools.

While the Bill moves away from diagnosis-based access, it may raise eligibility thresholds in practice, which is likely to limit access for children aged 0-8, people with psychosocial disability, people with fluctuating, degenerative or complex conditions, and people whose needs are not easily captured by standardised assessments. For example, on paper a child I work with may look very capable as on his best day he has a lot of skills. He is Autistic with a PDA profile and his perception of demands greatly influences his ability to engage in learning tasks, ADLs and community opportunities. He has fluctuating capsity and engages in masking at school. He can be like a duck who looks calm above the water but is paddling like mad under the water to get away from the demand while looking ‘normal’. This takes a lot of energy and means that he requires additional supports that was not easily seen or understood.

I hope that you read and understand the concerns of myself and many other health professionals. We want to protect the most vunerable members of our community and give them the supports that they need.

Kind regards