Submission 2593
Submission to the Senate Inquiry
National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations)
Bill 2026
Friday, 29th May, 2026
Executive Summary
This submission is made in both a personal and professional capacity.
I am a female in my early 40s living with permanent legal blindness and psychosocial disability, and I have worked as a special education teacher within the NSW public education system for more than 13 years.
I am proud of the life I have built despite significant barriers. Appropriate NDIS supports have enabled me to remain employed, live independently, participate in my community, and avoid hospital admission for three years. These are not small outcomes. They represent the goals the NDIS was designed to achieve.
My experiences with support reductions, prolonged review delays, missing evidence, repeated requests for documentation, and administrative failures have also shown how quickly stability can be undermined when participants face uncertainty regarding essential supports.
This submission raises concerns regarding proposed reforms relating to eligibility, reassessment processes, delegated legislation, support access, and the future certainty of participant supports. Participants with psychosocial, invisible, fluctuating, and complex disabilities may be particularly vulnerable to unintended consequences arising from these changes.
I also discuss the importance of allied health supports and assistive technology in maintaining safety, participation, accessibility, and long-term outcomes. These supports should be viewed as investments in inclusion and opportunity rather than discretionary extras.
As a special education teacher, I have observed the impact that support delays, reduced services, and increasing barriers can have on students with disability, their families, and schools. The consequences of inadequate support are rarely isolated to one person; they are felt across families, communities, and public systems.
The success of the NDIS should be measured not only by what it costs, but by what it makes possible.
I urge the committee to ensure that reforms strengthen participant outcomes, maintain the core principles of the NDIS, and provide sufficient time for meaningful consultation with the disability community.
Submission 2593
Introduction
I am a female in my early 40s living with permanent legal blindness and psychosocial disability. I have worked for more than 13 years as a special education teacher within the NSW public education system.
I am writing this submission in both a personal and professional capacity. My perspective is shaped not only by my own experiences navigating disability and the NDIS, but also through years of supporting students with disability and their families.
I am proud of the life I have built despite significant barriers. I completed two university degrees, fought discrimination to enter the teaching profession because of my low vision, and have dedicated my career to supporting children with disability to learn, communicate, participate, and thrive.
Those experiences have taught me that disability is complex, deeply individual, and often poorly understood by systems designed to provide support.
They have also shown me what can be achieved when the right supports are in place.
The issues discussed throughout this submission are not theoretical. They relate to real people whose ability to participate in education, employment, community life, relationships, and everyday activities may be affected by the decisions made through this legislation.
For that reason, I believe it is essential that the voices of people with disability remain central to any reform process.
I respectfully request that this submission remain confidential due to the sensitive personal and professional information it contains.
How NDIS Supports Maintain My Functional Capacity and Independence
The supports I receive through the NDIS are not about convenience. They are the foundation that allows me to maintain employment, manage daily responsibilities, remain connected to my community, and live safely and sustainably.
As a legally blind woman living with disability, many activities that others take for granted require additional planning, support, and effort.
The supports I receive assists me with my morning routine, travel to work, shopping, meal preparation, attending appointments, accessing exercise, and maintaining social and community connections.
While these tasks may appear ordinary, they are essential to maintaining my wellbeing and ability to participate in everyday life.
Without these supports, everyday responsibilities become significantly more difficult to manage.
Submission 2593
The outcomes achieved through these supports speak for themselves.
Appropriate supports have enabled me to continue contributing through meaningful employment, maintain my own home, participate in my community, and avoid returning to the level of crisis and instability I experienced in the past.
This demonstrates an important principle that is sometimes overlooked in discussions about disability funding: preventative supports work.
Removing supports does not remove disability. It simply shifts the impact elsewhere.
One of the most persistent misconceptions within disability policy is the assumption that employment indicates reduced need.
My experience demonstrates the opposite. I am able to work because I have support. Supports are not replacing my independence. They are what allow me to maintain it.
The Reality of Psychosocial and Invisible Disability
One of the greatest misconceptions surrounding psychosocial and invisible disability is the assumption that if a person is employed, educated, or appears outwardly capable, they must therefore be coping well or require little support.
My experience has been very different.
Like many people with invisible disabilities, I have learned how to function despite significant challenges. What is often unseen is the cost of doing so.
Most weekdays do not end when my workday finishes. Medical appointments, allied health appointments, daily responsibilities, and the ongoing demands of managing disability continue long after I leave work.
By the end of the day, I am frequently physically and emotionally exhausted. This is the reality that often sits behind labels such as “high functioning”.
Functioning is not the same as thriving.
Psychosocial disability also does not operate in predictable ways. Needs can fluctuate. Capacity can change over time.
Disability is not defined by a person’s best day.
For many people with psychosocial, invisible, and fluctuating disabilities, the greatest challenges are often the ones that remain unseen.
Submission 2593
Administrative Failures, NDIA Processes and Emotional Harm
While the NDIS has played an important role in my life, my experiences navigating the system in recent years have significantly undermined my confidence in its processes and decision-making.
These experiences have shaped my views regarding the importance of accountability, transparency, procedural fairness, and participant safeguards when considering future reforms.
For almost two years, I have been waiting for appropriate reassessment and review of my supports despite repeatedly providing updated evidence and documentation.
Throughout this process, I have been asked on multiple occasions to obtain further reports and supporting evidence at significant personal expense. Over time, I have spent thousands of dollars obtaining specialist reports, functional assessments, and professional evidence to demonstrate the impact of permanent disabilities.
Through a Freedom of Information request, I later discovered that important records, reports, and correspondence relating to my plan were either missing, inadequately recorded, or had not been appropriately considered.
This was deeply unsettling.
Participants are routinely told that decisions are evidence-based. Discovering that key evidence may not have been properly captured or considered significantly damaged my trust in the integrity of the planning process.
During an unplanned review meeting, I was also accused of fraud before later proving my innocence.
At the same time, I was repeatedly told by a delegate that my employment was being used as evidence that I required less support, despite extensive documentation outlining the impact of my disabilities and the role supports play in maintaining my ability to work.
My capacity building funding was reduced by approximately half, while my core supports were reduced by approximately $10,000. Much of the core funding was later reinstated through an S100 review process. Capacity building funds were not reinstated.
For me, this raised an important question.
If a substantial portion of funding was ultimately reinstated, what confidence can participants have that initial decisions are accurately reflecting their support needs?
The ongoing uncertainty surrounding my supports, combined with prolonged delays, repeated requests for evidence, and fear regarding future reductions, had a significant impact on my mental health and wellbeing.
There were periods during this process where I experienced suicidal ideation.
I do not raise this lightly.
Submission 2593
I raise it because discussions about disability policy often focus on budgets, systems, and processes while overlooking the human impact of prolonged uncertainty and instability.
One of the most important lessons I have learned through this experience is that the administrative burden itself can become disabling.
Participants are expected to navigate complex systems, gather evidence, challenge decisions, manage reviews, advocate for themselves, and repeatedly explain the impact of their disabilities, often while already living with significant functional impairment, fatigue, distress, and financial pressure.
I also lodged a complaint regarding my experiences. The complaint was closed without anyone speaking to me directly.
More than anything, this reinforced a feeling that many participants know well: that they are being assessed, reviewed, and discussed without genuinely being heard.
As Parliament considers reforms that may affect eligibility, reassessments, support access, and participant safeguards, I believe it is critical that participant confidence in the system is strengthened rather than weakened.
Trust is not built through increased scrutiny alone. It is built through fairness, transparency, accountability, and confidence that participants will be listened to when decisions about their lives are being made.
Allied Health and Assistive Technology Are Essential Supports
One of my greatest reservations regarding the future direction of the NDIS is the growing tendency to view certain supports primarily through the lens of cost rather than outcomes.
For many participants, allied health and assistive technology are not optional additions to a plan. They are the supports that make participation possible.
The allied health professionals I access, including psychology, exercise physiology, dietetics, and occupational therapy, play an important role in helping me maintain safety, wellbeing, and day-to-day functioning. Their role extends far beyond attending appointments.
They assist with emotional regulation, symptom management, daily living skills, maintaining routines, reducing risk, and preserving the capacity required to participate in everyday life.
These supports are preventative in nature. They help maintain stability and reduce the likelihood of deterioration, crisis, and the need for more intensive interventions in the future.
Support workers provide valuable assistance and are an important part of the disability workforce. However, they do not fulfil the same role as qualified allied health professionals.
Submission 2593
For example, my exercise physiologist provides specialised support that directly addresses the impact of my low vision, including balance deficits, injury prevention, safety monitoring, pacing, and ongoing modification of programs in response to changes in my needs.
This is not equivalent to having a support worker accompany me to the gym.
Allied health professionals undertake years of specialised education and clinical training. Their expertise allows them to assess risk, identify changes in functioning, adapt interventions, and provide evidence-based support in ways that cannot simply be substituted by another service type.
The distinction matters because participant safety matters.
I am also concerned about ongoing barriers to assistive technology.
Despite being legally blind, I have never received funding for appropriate mid-cost assistive technology through the NDIS.
The technologies I require include magnification and speech-based devices that would significantly improve accessibility both at home and within the community.
For people with living with blindness, assistive technology is not a luxury.
It is accessibility.
These technologies increase access to information, reduce fatigue, improve safety, and remove barriers that would otherwise limit participation in everyday life.
If the purpose of the NDIS is to support inclusion, participation, and opportunity, then allied health and assistive technology should be recognised as investments that help achieve those outcomes.
The success of the NDIS should be measured not only by what it costs, but by what it makes possible.
Professional Observations as a Special Education Teacher
As a special education teacher within the NSW public education system, I have observed the broader impact that delays, funding uncertainty, and barriers to support can have on children with disability, their families, and schools. These observations have reinforced many of the concerns outlined throughout this submission.
Families of children with disability are often navigating multiple systems simultaneously.
In addition to the everyday demands of parenting, they may be coordinating therapies, specialist appointments, assessments, education plans, support workers, funding reviews, and ongoing advocacy for their child.
Many families do this while managing financial pressures, caring responsibilities, their own health concerns, or disability within the family.
Submission 2593
The expectation that families must continually gather evidence, navigate complex processes, and advocate for access to essential supports places a considerable burden on households that are often already operating at capacity.
In my professional experience, not all families have equal ability to navigate these systems.
Families with financial resources, educational advantages, confidence, or professional knowledge are often better positioned to advocate successfully than families experiencing disadvantage, trauma, disability, language barriers, or financial hardship.
As barriers increase, inequity increases.
I regularly see families struggling to afford assessments and allied health reports that are necessary to access or maintain supports. I also see students waiting extended periods for therapies, assistive technology, communication supports, and reassessments.
These delays have real consequences. When supports are delayed, reduced, or unavailable, the impacts often become visible in schools.
I have observed increasing disengagement from learning, declining wellbeing, reduced access to communication, greater dysregulation, and escalating behavioural challenges among students whose support needs are not being adequately addressed.
These outcomes are not inevitable consequences of disability.
They are often consequences of unmet support needs.
Communication is not a luxury. It is fundamental to learning, relationships, safety, self-determination, and participation in society.
Families need support. Families need respite.
When those supports are unavailable, the consequences are often experienced not only by the primary carer, but by the entire family unit.
Importantly, schools cannot replace disability systems.
Educators work incredibly hard to support students with disability, but schools cannot absorb the loss of external therapies, assistive technology, respite, allied health services, and community-based supports. Nor should they be expected to.
The consequences of inadequate support are rarely isolated to one person.
They are felt across entire systems.
Submission 2593
Concerns Regarding the Proposed Reforms and Future Direction of the NDIS
The experiences outlined throughout this submission has left me questioning whether the proposed reforms will strengthen the outcomes the NDIS was created to achieve or make them more difficult to sustain.
The NDIS has enabled me to remain employed, live independently, participate in my community, and avoid hospital admission for three years. These outcomes should be viewed as evidence that appropriate disability supports are working.
For this reason, I believe any reform should be assessed not only on financial sustainability, but also on its impact on participation, stability, dignity, and long-term outcomes for people with disability.
I have significant reservations about reforms that may increase uncertainty regarding eligibility, support access, reassessment processes, and the future availability of essential supports.
Participants need certainty in order to plan their lives.
Employment, housing, healthcare, education, relationships, and community participation all depend upon some level of confidence that essential supports will continue to exist into the future.
My concern is not simply the loss of funding.
It is the loss of certainty.
The proposed expansion of delegated legislation is particularly important. Decisions about what supports can be funded, how support needs are assessed, and how eligibility is interpreted have the potential to affect the daily lives of thousands of disabled Australians.
Changes of this significance require transparency, accountability, and meaningful consultation with the people most affected by them.
Participants with psychosocial, invisible, fluctuating, and complex disabilities may be especially vulnerable to unintended consequences arising from these reforms.
Disability does not always present consistently. Capacity can vary over time, and the impact of disability is not always visible during an assessment, meeting, or brief interaction.
It is important that future policy settings recognise these realities and do not unintentionally exclude people whose disabilities fall outside more traditional or visible understandings of impairment.
I am also troubled by the growing perception that disability supports should be justified primarily through cost.
The purpose of the NDIS is not simply to fund services.
It is to enable people with disability to participate in society, pursue education and employment, maintain relationships, exercise choice and control, and live with dignity.
Any reform should ultimately be measured against those objectives.
Submission 2593
The question should not simply be whether a reform reduces expenditure.
It should also be whether it improves lives.
The disability community deserves genuine consultation, transparency, and sufficient time to understand reforms that may fundamentally affect our lives and futures.
Recommendations
Based on my experiences as both an NDIS participant and a special education teacher, I recommend that the committee:
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Allow additional time for consultation and community engagement before implementing major reforms that will significantly affect people with disability, their families, and support networks.
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Ensure that any changes to eligibility, support access, and reassessment processes recognise the realities of psychosocial, invisible, fluctuating, and complex disabilities.
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Strengthen participant safeguards, transparency, and accountability within NDIA decision- making processes, particularly where support reductions or eligibility decisions are involved.
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Introduce clear and timely review processes so participants are not left waiting months or years for decisions that directly affect their wellbeing, stability, and ability to plan for the future.
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Protect access to allied health supports where they are required to maintain safety, participation, and long-term outcomes.
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Recognise assistive technology as an essential pathway to accessibility, inclusion, and participation, particularly for participants with sensory disabilities.
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Ensure that delegated legislation affecting participant supports remains subject to meaningful scrutiny, transparency, and consultation with the disability community.
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Recognise the vital role of families, carers, and informal support networks, including the importance of respite and sustainable support arrangements.
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Assess reforms against participant outcomes as well as financial sustainability, including measures such as workforce participation, community inclusion, wellbeing, and reduced reliance on crisis services.
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Maintain the core principles of the NDIS - choice, control, dignity, participation, and independence as the foundation for all future reforms.
Closing Statement
Throughout this submission, I have shared my experiences as both an NDIS participant and a special education teacher.
While those experiences are personal, the issues they raise extend far beyond my own circumstances.
The decisions made through this legislation will affect children, adults, families, carers, educators, allied health professionals, and communities across Australia.
For many people with disability, the NDIS represents more than a funding scheme.
Submission 2593
It represents opportunity.
It represents access, participation, dignity, and the ability to exercise choice and control over one’s own life.
As Parliament considers these reforms, I encourage decision-makers to listen carefully to the voices of those who will live with their consequences.
Disability is already challenging.
People with disability should not be required to overcome additional barriers created by the very systems designed to support them.
The goal of reform should be to strengthen confidence in the scheme, improve outcomes for participants, and ensure that future generations of Australians with disability have the same opportunities to participate, contribute, and thrive.
Respectfully submitted,