National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026
Submission 717
1 June 2026
To whom it may concern,
I would like to make this submission to the NDIS inquiry. I am the mother of four children with autism and the director of a private therapy practice in rural Queensland. I would like to share my thoughts from both a personal and professional perspective.
As a parent: ● Only one of my children is on the NDIS - he has been accessing therapy for the past 5 years. ● He has benefited from therapy with an OT, psych and also a developmental educator during his time on the NDIS and has steadily worked towards his goals. ● He is about to turn 16 and he is now successfully homeschooling, he has a part-time job, participates in community extracurricular activities (not NDIS funded) and is going to apply for his learners permit. This is a direct result of the years of therapy that he has participated in. ● Historically, he was unable to attend mainstream school, he could not participate in extracurricular activities successfully as he would have meltdowns, we were often unable to take him out into the community, he did not have friends, he was regularly suspended from school and he was expelled, his outbursts were violent and aggressive, his siblings missed out on many things because of the levels of support needed and the risks associated with taking my son into public (for him and for others). He had had some interaction with the police. ● He would not have been able to make this significant progress, and be working towards becoming an independently member of his community if it was not for the high levels of therapy he received. He was at risk of needing ongoing support into adulthood, and for many years we did not feel that he would be able to hold down a job - therefore he would have likely needed to go onto a centrelink payment. His father and I would have had to take more time off work and this would have reduced our participation in work and the community and therefore the tax we contribute. ● Cuts to therapy budgets and the restriction of access to the system would have negatively impacted my son.
As the director of a private practice in rural Queensland: ● We provide therapy services for children and adults in our area and surrounding areas. We work closely with other providers in the area across disciplines and across funding categories. ● Our clients vary in age and complexity from 2 years to 62 years of age, and our clients have a wide range of disabilities. ● The cuts to the NDIS will impact our clients, our community and our business. ● Many of our clients are already isolated, and the previous cuts to support have isolated them further - some are already not able to go on their outings due to cuts to travel/km budgets within their core supports. Further reduction in social and community budgets will place many clients at risk of isolation which has many flow on effects. ● We work alongside a range of small plan managers - these are teams of local people who know our clients and support them as needed - to replace these with large
National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026
Submission 717
organisations will reduce the usability and accessibility for our clients. Likewise, we work with a small number of support coordinators who are very knowledgeable about the NDIS, and also understand the community that we live in. ● We are already seeing our younger clients removed from the early intervention arm of the NDIS and funnelled into a system (Thriving Kids) that does not exist in Queensland. Many children who are six are being removed from they system and therefore not able to access any services that they desperately need. ● There are no community organisations in our area to provide any foundational supports. The school therapists already provide a service to a select number or children, and they are stretched and rarely able to provide the needed services. Likewise, the local hospital service is limited and stretched. ● Our schools are all short staffed - with constant vacant positions and they do not have the funding of capacity to increase the supports they offer. This is the same with kindy and daycares. ● We know our clients well, and are able to provide assessment and recommendations based on many years of study, upskilling, and formal and informal assessments. It would not be possible for a generic assessment, conducted by non clinical staff to provide the same level of understanding about a client’s functional capacity. ● Reduction of therapy budgets will place clients at harm, will reduce progress, will shift the need for supports from the NDIS to other government organisations (Centrelink, education, medicare, justice, child safety). ● Registrations costs are currently astronomical and would place additional stress on providers of therapy services. There are many practices that are under huge amounts of financial pressure already - we provide a valuable and life changing service, which deserves to be acknowledged and appropriately remunerated. ● The ability for the minister, and any future minister to cut areas of funding as a whole is terrifying and shows a lack of understanding of the complexity of disability and the NDIS. ● People’s lives are at risk.
Please feel free to contact me via email if you require further information.
Kind regards,