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

Submission 3762

NDIA – Securing the future of the NDIS for future generations 2026

Date: 25 May 2026

We are the parents of a 34-year-old woman with Down Syndrome. We are very concerned about the many changes to the NDIA legislation and its probable impact on the lives of people with disability and their families. Of particular concern to us is the move back to Commissioned Services i.e. Block Funding for community participation.

The NDIA website notes:

“The current way the NDIS approaches social and community participation means the programs which once provided real opportunities for connection have been allowed to wither. We will put the community back into community participation.”

To do this we will:

• establish a $200 million fund - the Inclusive Communities Fund - to rebuild capability among community organisations to host genuine participation activities.
• re-set participant budgets for social, civic and community participation and capacity building daily activities.

We were part of the advocacy movement 20 years ago to achieve individualised community participation funding and self-management at the NSW State level. Under block funding granted to State approved providers, my daughter had to take what they offered. If she didn’t like what was on the menu she didn’t have access to any other support. What was offered was meaningless, adult minding day programs that wasted people’s lives with other people with disability, that you didn’t know, away from your local community. They did not offer ‘real opportunities for connection’. It is not surprising these programs ‘withered’ once individualised funding became available as people voted with their feet and abandoned grouped, segregated programs.

With individualised funding people can craft a life of their own, focused on developing skills, pursuing things that interested them, contributing to their community, living with people they know where it makes sense.

Scenario one, Commissioned Funding - Service bus collects our daughter from home and takes her 35Kls to the bigger town. At the centre there is a weekly timetable of activities such as watching a movie, cooking something, a picnic in a park, coffee in a shopping centre, craft. She is part of a group who she doesn’t know who all have various needs of their own, supervised by staff who are often itinerant. No one in the big town or her local community knows her as an individual. The recent Arouma adds for their group programs demonstrate this reality. Local community response is “There they are or here they come”.

Scenario two, Individualised Funding – Our daughter volunteers at the local leisure centre creche, has a part time job, goes to the gym, takes her grandmother out to lunch each Sunday,

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

Submission 3762

visits her brother and his family once a month for the weekend, attends music bingo at the RSL each week, follows her interest in art and learning to read. She does her shopping, washing, cooking and cleaning. She manages this with some consistent support and mentoring by local women who know her, in her local community. Local community response is ‘Hey ’.

Scenario two is a real life. Such examples of ordinary living were once showcased as innovation and approved services with block funding were challenged to provide similar outcomes which they failed to do. Group supports simply cannot provide real inclusive community outcomes.

In our daughter’s case her individual support is no more expensive than a group program would be, we just use the funding to fit the vision of her life. One of deep connection in her local community.

We urge the government to continue reasonable and necessary individual community participation funding in the NDIS.