Adaptive exercise and support worker assistance (Participant experience) | External submission

Submission 646

(Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026

I am a wheelchair user and long-term NDIS participant living in Zetland, Sydney,

writing to express my serious concern about the proposed 30% reduction to Core

Supports funding for Assistance with Social and Community Participation. I rely on

this funding not as a luxury, but as the mechanism that makes community life

possible for me at all. Without it, my ability to maintain physical health, social

connection, and independence will be significantly and irreversibly diminished.

Currently, I attend a weekly Boxercise class where my support worker holds the

pads for me — a task I cannot perform myself due to my disability, and one it would

be unreasonable to ask a fee-paying participant to take on. This activity has been

transformative: it builds my upper body strength and has allowed me to form genuine

friendships with able-bodied community members who are glad to see people with

disability participating in mainstream fitness activities alongside them. I also attend a

weekly Day Program that directly supports my NDIS goal of meeting people with

shared lived experience and participating in activities that promote my health and

wellbeing. Through adaptive HIIT, creative arts, drama, cooking and dance, I have

grown in confidence, built meaningful friendships, and been motivated to contribute

to my community through volunteer work. I have also recently developed a keen

interest in adaptive mountain biking — an activity that offers profound physical and

mental health benefits, from cardiovascular fitness and strength building to the well

documented mood-lifting effects of time spent outdoors in fresh air and natural

environments. For a person with disability, being out in the community on a trail

alongside able-bodied riders is not only empowering, but also a powerful statement

of inclusion. However, pursuing this requires not only an adaptive bike but a support

worker to accompany me on outings in case I need assistance — a need that is

reasonable, legitimate, and directly tied to my safety. Losing this funding would mean

losing access to an activity I have only just begun to discover, and that has already

shown real promise for my wellbeing.

Submission 646

As I have aged, I have made the responsible decision to reduce my driving due to

declining judgement, which means I now depend on support workers to help me

travel further distances to see family and friends. Cutting this funding does not make

me more independent — it makes me a prisoner in my own neighbourhood. I urge

the Committee and Minister Butler to recognise that for participants like me, this

category of support is not discretionary spending. It is the infrastructure of a life lived

with dignity, connection, and purpose, and cutting it runs directly counter to the

NDIS’s foundational promise.