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

Submission 3746

Submission to the NDIS Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026

28th May 2026

I make this submission as a service provider with decades of experience working alongside people with severe, lifelong cognitive disabilities and their families, across multiple service systems and reform periods. My comments are informed by long-term, direct support practice and close collaboration with families, clinicians, and frontline workers.

I want to outline the harm this Amendment Bill will cause if it passes Parliament in the current form. People with severe, lifelong cognitive disabilities are precisely the group the NDIS was established to support. Their disabilities are permanent and not expected to improve over time. The proposal for every participant to be reassessed from 2028 is an unnecessary, disruptive, and costly exercise for people with severe and lifelong cognitive disabilities. The I CAN assessment, like many standardised functional assessment tools, is not validated for this group of people. It relies on brief, unfamiliar assessment encounters and moment-in-time performance. This approach does not reflect real-world functioning, ongoing supervision requirements, safety risks, and environmental stressors that shape daily support needs for them.

With such severe disabilities it is both pointless and disrespectful to be putting this group of people through an assessment. Many of them have physical and chronic medical disabilities that increase their support needs well beyond their cognitive disability. Assessments are an unwarranted and upsetting experience for both the person with the disability and their family. For the person, it is an unnecessary demand and additional stressor in what is already a stressful life. And it is unlikely to provide any useful additional information other than ticking a box that has unfortunately been ticked many times before. Unfamiliar environments, new assessors, and task-based assessments frequently trigger anxiety, behavioural distress, and limited engagement for the person with a severe disability.

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

Submission 3746

Reassessment also creates a substantial burden for families, who already carry

term responsibility for advocating for and safeguarding their son or daughter.

Families experience significant distress knowing their family member will be required participate in another unnecessary assessment, particularly when there is fear that essential, lifelong supports could be reduced or lost based on an assessment that does not accurately capture real-world need.

From a system perspective, the cost of reassessments for people with permanent, complex disabilities represents a poor use of limited NDIS resources. In practice, these assessments rarely alter support needs but do consume limited funding in an unnecessary way. It also consumes worker time that could be better spent and family resilience which is often stretched. These resources proposed to be spent on assessment of people with severe cognitive disabilities and complex needs would be far better directed toward maintaining stable supports and addressing their unmet needs.

The long-term sustainability of the NDIS is important. However, sustainability must be balanced with proportionality and practice-based evidence. For people with severe, lifelong cognitive disabilities the priority should be stability, predictability, and continuity of support. Reforms should recognise this and avoid introducing unnecessary processes that add distress, risk, and cost without improving outcomes.

Thank you for the opportunity to provide this submission.