National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026
Submission 3260
Submission to NDIS
NDIS decision makers
It has come to my attention that the NDIS is proposing to cut essential services for NDIS participants who are children with mild to moderate Autistic conditions, in a bid to reduce costs in the overall budget and move them into a program basically forcing other services like education/childcare, health and group supports (however not specifically explained who or what group supports) that are already struggling to cope with stretched services within each department.
Decisions to transition children into another program, Thriving Kids, puts additional stresses firstly on families as they cope both financially to support the needs of their children as Medicare generally only pays out a percentage of costs when providers of services charge top dollar, leaving families to pay for the shortfall. The educational system/childcare centre is already failing students/children as class numbers rise and less educator support provided to support both educator and students/children, as the bulk of students/children will suffer the loss of learning as their difficulties with developmental delays will be to hard to manage by their teacher/childcare provider. These children that need early intervention will benefit greatly with support from the NDIS, learning early techniques to allow them to integrate into society and function as any child should. Integrating them into society without early intervention then expecting schools and childcare centres to work with disability children, will bring disruption within school routines and impact of other children and their learning as schools will have greater issues overall to combat rising developmental and mental statuses of children. To quote the key statistics of the Disability, Ageing, Carers, Summary of Findings 2022 (almost three quarters (73%) of Autistic people had a profound or severe disability. A figure that most certainly rises each year.
Please consider carefully that a reduction of participants under 8 years of age. will only mean that missed early intervention will generate older children with more complex needs into the NDIS systems that had failed them as under 8 year old children whose brains are more receptive to learning. Therefore future participants will have greater needs and will require greater support putting more burden on the NDIS.