National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026
Submission 699
Dear Committee Members,
I am writing on behalf of Wildflower Kids Therapy, a paediatric occupational therapy clinic on the Gold Coast supporting children and families through occupational therapy services.
We’ve been reading through the proposed changes within the NDIS Future Generations Bill and wanted to share some concerns from what we see day to day working with kids and families.
At Wildflower we support children with all sorts of different strengths, challenges and ways of experiencing the world. We take a neurodiversity-affirming approach and spend a lot of time getting to know the child sitting in front of us, not just what is written in a report or assessment.
One of the things that stands out to us with the proposed changes is the concern around decision making becoming more standardised and potentially relying more heavily on systems, tools and broad rules.
Kids are messy. Development is messy.
Children don’t develop in a straight line and they definitely don’t fit neatly into boxes. We see children who might look like they are coping in one environment and are completely exhausted in another. We see kids who are masking all day at school and then struggling at home. We see children whose needs change significantly over time, particularly around big life transitions.
A checklist doesn’t always tell you that.
Some of the most important information comes from conversations with families, observations, clinical judgement and understanding the bigger picture around that child’s life. That’s where experienced therapists bring value. It’s not because a therapist knows better than everyone else, it’s because we’re trying to understand the whole child and the context around them.
We’re also concerned about proposed reductions to capacity building and participation supports.
These supports are often the things that help children build confidence, participate at school, join in with community activities, develop routines, make friendships and become more independent over time. Sometimes people can see these things as extras, but for many of the families we support they really aren’t.
We also worry about younger children or children whose needs aren’t always easy to capture through standardised assessments.
We’ve had families tell us that getting support early completely changed things for their child and their family. Not because therapy “fixed” them, but because it helped them better understand their child, put supports around them and create environments where they could actually thrive.
We understand that the NDIS needs to be sustainable and that reform is important. We also understand these are difficult decisions.
But we’d ask that changes don’t move us further away from individual children and families and towards broad rules that risk missing the complexity of real life.
National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026
Submission 699
We would ask Parliament to:
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ensure support decisions continue to be based on individual need and informed clinical assessment
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keep appropriately qualified allied health professionals involved in assessment and planning processes
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reconsider proposed reductions to capacity building and participation supports
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ensure children with complex, changing or less obvious support needs don’t lose access to important supports
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retain flexibility around reassessment and review as children’s needs change over time We support Occupational Therapy Australia’s recommendations and the No OT, No NDIS campaign.
Thank you for taking the time to read our submission.