National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 Submission 330
Hello,
I am writing as a support coordinator in regional South Australia and as the mother of two NDIS participants. I am currently before the Administrative Review Tribunal seeking to have my elder daughter’s plan corrected. What I am experiencing as a parent is not exceptional, it is what I see every week across my businesses’ caseload of seventy participants.
My elder daughter is thirteen, with a CARS2-HF score of 37.5 placing her in the severe range of autism symptom severity, alongside ADHD, anxiety, and a PDA (pathological demand avoidance) profile. Her February 2026 plan and the subsequent internal review, decided in April 2026, declined eight categories of support her treating clinicians had recommended. The confirmed plan funds no therapeutic psychology for a child with documented self-injurious behaviour and suicidal ideation. No speech pathology for a child whose standardised language scores fall at the 9th percentile. No exercise physiology despite direct clinical links to her disability. No assistive technology. And behaviour support reduced by over eighty percent, despite unambiguous evidence of escalating need. Eleven expert clinical reports were before the decision-maker. The core recommendations in all of them were refused.
The internal review stated that parents are expected to plan for school holidays, including taking leave. I arrive at school holidays already in deficit. My daughter attends school for fifty percent of scheduled hours. I manage meltdowns multiple times daily, each lasting up to an hour, involving verbal aggression, property damage, and self-injury. I provide full physical prompting for dressing, toileting, hygiene, and medication every morning for a thirteen-year-old who cannot do these independently. The decision called this ordinary parental responsibility. A CARS2-HF score of 37.5 does not describe a child whose care is ordinary parenting.
The economic cost is documented. In 2021 I earned $130,000 and paid $28,203 in income tax. Last financial year I paid $9,730 a loss of $18,473 in annual tax revenue, not by choice, but because inadequate funded support has progressively reduced my working capacity. We defaulted on our mortgage and are selling our investment property. None of this appears in the government’s cost modelling. When the NDIS declines a recommended support, the care does not disappear. It transfers to a family member, at a measurable cost and a human limit.
My younger daughter, also an NDIS participant and part-time wheelchair user, now attends counselling for secondary trauma from growing up in a household defined by her sister’s unmet needs. That too is a cost of a gap the NDIS chose not to close.
The 2023 independent review was explicit: foundational supports are a non-negotiable precondition before eligibility or funding changes. Those supports do not exist in the Riverland. When plans are cut, the care shifts into family homes, emergency departments, and workers already at capacity. The government has not released modelling on what that costs. I am asking why.
National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 Submission 330
I am asking this committee to reject this bill until foundational supports exist in regional and rural areas, to require the release of downstream cost modelling before the bill proceeds, to mandate clinical accountability when expert recommendations are overridden, and to extend the submission deadline. Fifteen days for 113 pages of legislation is not a genuine invitation for public input, especially for those who are already completely burnout.