Submission to the Senate Inquiry into the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026

The Risk of Destabilising Australia’s Existing Early Intervention System

| am writing as the Director of Eat Speak Play, a paediatric speech pathology practice that has supported children and families across Sydney for over 10 years.

While we support the need for the NDIS to remain sustainable and for fraud and misuse to be addressed, we are deeply concerned that the proposed reforms risk significantly reducing access to developmental supports for children while simultaneously destabilising the private paediatric sector that currently carries a substantial portion of Australia’s early intervention workload.

Private paediatric practices are not peripheral providers within the disability sector. In many communities, particularly outer metropolitan, regional and rural areas, private practices are the primary source of developmental support available to children and families.

The reality on the ground is that public systems do not currently have the workforce or capacity to absorb increased demand if private providers reduce services or close.

Across the sector, private practices are already managing:

• Significant workforce shortages
• Escalating operational costs
• Reduced clinician retention
• Burnout across allied health professions
• Increasing unpaid administrative requirements
• Long and growing waitlists

Many providers are operating with extremely limited financial buffer while attempting to maintain continuity of care for vulnerable children and families.

The proposed tightening of access pathways, reassessment thresholds and permanence criteria is likely to further increase delays, uncertainty and administrative burden across an already strained system.

The proposed reassessment framework is particularly concerning. Children’s developmental needs do not remain static. Communication, regulation, learning and participation needs frequently change across developmental transitions, school demands, puberty, mental health changes and changes in family supports.

Restricting reassessment access to only “significant and ongoing” changes risks creating a system where children are unable to access increased supports until difficulties have substantially escalated.

This is not early intervention.

These changes may also disproportionately impact autistic children, children with developmental language disorder, intellectual disability and developmental delay, whose support needs often fluctuate across environments and over time.

There is a serious risk that the reforms unintentionally shift the burden of care onto:

• Families already under financial and emotional pressure
• Schools already struggling to support increasing developmental complexity
• Clinicians already experiencing workforce fatigue
• Community providers already operating at or beyond capacity

If private paediatric services become financially unviable, the impacts will be immediate and visible:

• Practices will reduce staffing or close
• Waitlists will increase further
• Families will lose trusted therapeutic relationships
• Regional communities will lose already limited access pathways
• Children will miss critical developmental windows for intervention

Importantly, reducing access to early intervention does not remove support needs. It delays them until they become more complex, more intensive and significantly more expensive across education, health, disability, mental health and justice systems.

There is substantial evidence that children with untreated language disorders and unmet developmental needs experience higher rates of school disengagement, mental health difficulties, unemployment, social exclusion and involvement with the justice system later in life. Early communication difficulties are strongly associated with poorer literacy outcomes, behavioural challenges and increased vulnerability within youth justice populations.

Reducing access to timely developmental support may create short-term cost savings within the NDIS while generating substantially higher long-term costs across other government systems.

The Bill repeatedly references sustainability. However, sustainability cannot be achieved by weakening the provider network and workforce currently delivering frontline developmental supports across Australia.

Without careful implementation and genuine consultation with providers and families, these reforms risk reducing practical access to supports while increasing pressure across every other part of the system.

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5. Recognise private paediatric providers as essential infrastructure within Australia’s developmental and disability support system.

6. Consider the long-term social and economic costs of delayed intervention across education,

mental health and justice systems.

Thank you for the opportunity to provide this submission.

Kind regards,

Erin Georgiou

Director of Eat Speak Play Speech Pathologist (CPSP,MSPA) Bach. App Sci (Speech Pathology