National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026
Submission 3333
Supporter Submission – Elspeth Allan
Prepared for parliamentary submission
My name is Kate Bohr. I live in Richmond, NSW, and I work as a National Finance & Admin Manager. I am also Elspeth Allan’s sister. Elspeth is a 54-year-old NDIS participant with permanent, complex and safety-critical disability support needs.
I care deeply about the NDIS because someone I love depends on it every day. My sister relies on her current NDIS supports to remain safe, emotionally regulated, stable in her housing, and included in the community. Her support needs are not occasional or low level — they are constant, highly individualised, and essential.
I oppose the new NDIS Bill because I am deeply worried it will make it easier for people like Elspeth to lose or have reduced the supports they need to live safely and with dignity.
The NDIS has been life-changing for Elspeth. Her current 24/7 one-to-one support arrangement is clinically required, functionally essential, and the least restrictive option for maintaining her safety and wellbeing. It allows her to remain in her own home, where she has lived for decades, and to stay connected to her community.
Elspeth’s support model has been developed over many years by her family through lived experience, advocacy, and careful observation of what keeps her safe and well. It is based on continuous relational engagement, close monitoring of behavioural and emotional cues, and careful management of transitions and environmental changes. It is not excessive — it is essential.
Because of her disability-related impairments, Elspeth has substantial difficulties with emotional regulation, safety awareness, communication, daily functioning, and managing change, unfamiliar people, or unstructured environments. She depends on consistent one-to-one support, anticipatory intervention, and immediate response to signs of distress. Shared, intermittent, pooled, or reactive support models are not safe substitutes for her current supports.
If Elspeth did not receive the support she needs through the NDIS, the consequences would be serious. Any reduction, restriction, reinterpretation, staging, or destabilisation of her supports would create foreseeable and preventable harm. It would place her at risk of severe emotional dysregulation, extreme isolation, behaviours of concern, increased risk of self-harm, and possible loss of housing stability or crisis intervention. These are not hypothetical risks — they are known and documented.
Without the right supports, Elspeth would not be able to safely participate in the community or maintain the stability she currently has. She would be at risk of losing the safeguards that allow her to live safely in her own home and remain connected to the people around her.
National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026
Submission 3333
One thing I am specifically worried about is Elspeth losing her trusted one-to-one support model and being pushed into shared or reduced supports. Past experience has shown that shared or group-based support environments are inappropriate and unsafe for her. In those settings, she has experienced severe withdrawal, inability to engage, escalating distress, and increased risk. Reintroducing those arrangements would recreate known harms.
I am also worried about the broader reform environment and the pressure it places on participants with intensive and individualised supports. My concern is that people like Elspeth will be treated as budgets to be reduced rather than human beings whose safety depends on the continuation of appropriate supports. Her supports are life-preserving, stability-preserving, and essential to her continued safe living in the community.
The Bill in its current form is harmful and should not be passed by Parliament. People with complex disability support needs must not be exposed to avoidable harm because of reforms that reduce, narrow, or destabilise essential supports.