Association of WESTERN AUSTRALIA
October 2025
Committee Secretariat
PO Box 6021
Parliament House
CANBERRA
Canberra ACT 2600
DISCLAIMER: The Autism Association acknowledges and celebrates the strengths, abilities, and valuable contributions of autistic people within our community. For the purposes of this article, we focus specifically on the challenges and unmet needs some autistic individuals and their families may face. This is not intended to define Autism solely in terms of difficulty or deficit, but rather to highlight areas where greater understanding, support, and systemic change are needed to ensure equity and inclusion for all.
Dear Committee Secretariat
Submission in Response to Inquiry into the Thriving Kids Initiative
For over 50 years the Autism Association of Western Australia has been the leading organization supporting people with Autism and their families in Western Australia. By championing support for Autistic individuals, driven by research, our commitment to evidence-based practice, and the voices of autistic individuals and their families, the Association has helped transform how our community understands Autism. The Association has a proud legacy of advocacy, innovation and support and has been a long-term trusted resource for the sector.
The Autism Association of Western Australia provides the following response and recommendations to the Inquiry into the Thriving Kids Initiative. The intention of this response is to ensure that under the new initiative, every autistic person, and their family, be provided with suitable, timely, and specialised support to allow them to participate in their communities with confidence.
This submission, prepared in response to the Inquiry into Thriving Kids, outlines the need for the Thriving Kids Initiative to:
- Be developed with a clear understanding of Autism and the needs of Autistic individuals and their families in mind.
- Establish a robust and transparent Framework along with an effective mechanism to ensure that all Autistic individuals in need of supports will get access to a funding scheme which meets their individual needs.
- Provide reassurance that families will not be disadvantaged or excluded based on changes to eligibility for the NDIS
- Include consideration for seamless and unencumbered transition between schemes where appropriate.
- Ensure that services available to Autistic individuals are timely, specialised, and adequate to meet their individual needs.
- Ensure that the scheme supports the sustainability of suitable skilled workforce to effectively assess eligibility and meet the specialised and individual needs of participants.
An Informed Understanding of Autism
During Minister Butler’s National Press Club Announcement on 20th August, he made reference to large numbers of young children with mild to moderate developmental delay and Autism, unintentionally being on the NDIS Scheme. The information shared during the announcement implied that these diagnoses did not constitute significant and permanent disability. “Mild and moderate autism” are not recognized terms in any of the classification systems, including DSM-V, DSM-V-TR or ICD-11. These terms lead to clinical inaccuracy by oversimplifying the heterogeneity of autism, service access gaps and inconsistency in the way they would be applied through different government systems, e.g., schools.
It is a concern that an inaccurate understanding of Autism could lead to a scheme which excludes participants based on a diagnosis of Autism; is inequitable; and is not adequately fit for purpose. It is important that the development of the Thriving Kids initiative and any associated changes to NDIS eligibility for people with diagnosed Autism are based on detailed understanding of Autistic people and their needs.
While the needs of autistic children with intellectual disability are now better understood than they were many years ago, the needs of autistic children without intellectual disability remain very poorly understood. This is largely the case because disability is more commonly understood through the prism of physical, intellectual or sensory disability; that is, a disability that is evident in a concrete way that can be immediately seen. For example, when a person uses a
wheelchair for mobility it can be easily assumed that they require access to a ramp or lift to access the upper levels of a building.
Autistic children and adults have unique needs which are poorly recognised in comparison to other disabilities. Their support needs may be less obvious to those who do not adequately understand Autism.
Autism is a significant lifelong disability. Autism impacts children and adults to varying degrees of severity. However, there are common features across the Spectrum that if not understood and supported, can result in cascading disability.
If children with Autism do not receive quality supports that are tailored to their needs and delivered by specialists who understand Autism, their level of disability can become compounded. This can result in greater functional limitations, increased dependence, higher support needs, and reduced participation in meaningful pursuits.
Recommendation: In the context of emerging changes to the funding landscape under the Thriving Kids initiative, it is pivotal that decision making and implementation of the initiative takes careful consideration to accurately understand Autism and the needs of Autistic individuals and their families to ensure access to the right individualised supports in a timely fashion to help children with autism to thrive in everyday life.
Equitable Funding Design for Equitable Access
During Minister Butler’s Press Club Announcement, he announced the intention to return the National Disability Insurance Scheme to its original purpose of “the provision of support to people with significant and permanent care and support needs” and outlines how those with mild to moderate developmental delay and autism were not part of the intended recipients of the scheme.
Autism is a lifelong neurodevelopmental disability, with ongoing support needs that fluctuate and are context-dependent (National Autism Strategy).
The diagnosis is not based on genetic or physical markers but based on clinical observation and assessment of significant and observable impacts on functional performance by a multidisciplinary team with specific qualifications and training.
To receive a diagnosis of Autism, a person must show that they require support for everyday function and participation. Therefore, the day-to-day functioning of a person with autism has already been determined to warrant a significant and permanent disability that requires ongoing
support. It is important to note here, that ‘lifelong’ does not mean that the supports needs of an autistic person are static. The support needs of a person with autism may change across the lifespan and vary in severity.
It must be noted that the Productivity Commission’s Report (2011: Disability Care and Support), which laid the groundwork for the NDIS, outlines that the eligibility criteria included whether a person has a permanent disability that has a significant
impact on their ability to participate in everyday life and outlined autism as one of the areas of highest needs for long-term, continuous support.
In addition to this, an outcome of the Senate Inquiry into Autism (Commonwealth of Australia, 2022) that autism should be recognised as a permanent condition, and that for many individuals, results in significant functional impairments across multiple domains.
Recommendation: The Thriving Kids Initiative must give thorough consideration to ensuring consistent eligibility and access for autistic people. Its implications for access to the NDIS should be cautious of the damaging effects of excluding a large group of individuals diagnosed with a permanent disability with identified functional support needs.
A Robust Framework
Given the indication that many children currently eligible for the NDIS may ultimately be deemed ineligible and redirected to alternative schemes under the Thriving Kids Initiative, there is concern that some may miss out on the supports they need.
It is important that the Thriving Kids initiative is based on a transparent, and robust framework to determine eligibility to either scheme. This framework needs to be sensitive enough to accurately understand individual needs and align these needs with the appropriate supports. It needs to be calibrated to ensure those currently eligible for the NDIS will continue to access appropriate individualised supports
The framework should also have mechanisms to ensure eligibility and needs can be adaptable to changing needs to ensure seamless and easy transition between the schemes.
These features will be important to prevent negative impact on individuals and families upon rollout, and to build trust in the system moving forward.
Children with autism and no intellectual disability are often poorly understood by inexperienced assessors. Universal functional assessment tools may not be sufficiently sensitive to pick up the varying impact of autism. For example, many standardised tools are intrinsically
informed by Intellectual and Physical Disability. These tools often do not pick up the cognitive impairment of children with autism as these impairments relate to the processing and synthesising of information and the ability to read social situations and other people.
Recommendation: The Thriving Kids initiative needs to be based on a transparent, and robust framework to determine eligibility to either scheme, be adaptable to changing needs, and allow for seamless transitions between the schemes to support autistic people and their families.
It is extremely important that the thriving kids initiative should upon rollout, have sufficient workforce, with established expert knowledge, along with reliable tools, to effectively and accurately assess for eligibility. Those involved in assessment and eligibility must be skilled and equipped to apply the eligibility framework effectively and with relative ease for participants.
The Impact of the Right Individualised Supports
While support needs for people with Autism across the lifespan will vary according to life stages, environments and a range of other factors, it is important to consider that reducing access to specialised supports early in life can result in compounded impacts and increased needs in the future. Early intervention provides an opportunity for individuals to build skills cumulatively over time to experience success and participation.
Without early support to build these foundations, however, many autistic children experience challenges transitioning to school, become isolated, do not develop supportive friendships and their experience of life can be one of failure and not belonging. However, with the right kind of support, to navigate the social world, access curriculums and build independence and participation, autistic children will thrive.
Regardless of intellectual ability, all children diagnosed with autism, by definition, have cognitive impairments that impact their day-to-day life. They have particular ways of processing information and understanding language that, if not supported and accommodated, can result in distress and failure to progress at school or in social life. Ultimately, it can result in significantly reduced independence.
It is evident that autism is not fully understood across the sectors. It is therefore pivotal that a workforce with appropriate training, skills, and experience is in place to provide quality support to autistic children and their families. For Thriving Kids to be successful, thorough consideration is required to ensure workforce readiness. The scheme needs to provide real support and not be limited to online platforms.
During the Press Club announcement, Minister Butler emphasised the importance of ensuring the NDIS remains financially sustainable. While this priority is understandable, subsequent comments regarding the number of children with autism in the scheme, the apparent misunderstanding of autism as a lifelong
neurodevelopmental disability, and references to diverting “this group of kids over time from the NDIS” suggest that the Thriving Kids Initiative may be framed as a cost-saving measure specifically in relation to autistic children.
However, this approach appears contradictory. If the goal is to reduce the lifetime cost to the NDIS, it would not be logical to cut or reduce access to Early Intervention. Extensive research clearly shows that Early Intervention offers the greatest opportunity to positively influence developmental trajectories, reduce support needs, and decrease long-term reliance on the scheme.
Recommendation: For autistic children and their families to thrive, they deserve a scheme and supports that can be delivered by a workforce who understand their needs, and who can provide timely, quality, individualised supports.
Access to Equitable Supports
The current approach of using functional assessment to determine eligibility into the NDIS seems conflicting with the selection of a specific diagnostic group to be diverted. Why autism? There are other diagnostic groups whose support needs display along a continuum. The support requirements across different disabilities are diverse, similar to those of autistic children, therefore it seems inequitable and inappropriate to remove access to the NDIS for autistic people as a group. For example, a child with vision impairments would never have their glasses taken away and still asked to continue learning at school without them; a child in a wheelchair would never have their ramp removed stopping them from accessing their classroom; a child with cerebral palsy would never have their mobility aids removed and still be required to move around their school and community. Therefore, it is not acceptable to remove access to the necessary interventions and scaffolding in place for an autistic child to support their participation.
Reassurance for Autistic Children and their families
Minister Butler’s statements about the focus being on identifying needs as early as possible in a child’s life are unanimously agreed upon. This is evident in the research, where targeted early
intervention is critical to the lifelong trajectory for an autistic person. While it is not yet known if Thriving Kids will effectively mean a cut to services, or simply a relocation to the States and Territories, families of autistic children are anxious. They are incredibly aware of how their child’s disability is frequently misunderstood. It is not simply adequate to expect that regular community services such as child health nurses, playgroups, and website-based resources are equipped to provide the required support to the child and their family.
Tailored, specialist identification, assessment and intervention are required for children with autism if the focus of the government is on long term sustainability of the NDIS.
The Autism community needs reassurance that appropriate support will be available to children regardless of whether it sits under Thriving Kids or the NDIS to fund it.
Recommendations
It is recommended, for the Thriving Kids Initiative to be implemented effectively, serious consideration and great care be taken to ensure that people with disabilities are not only protected from discrimination and disadvantage as a result of the scheme but also provided with hope. This includes ensuring that the supports available to them are responsive, individualised, innovative, and specialised to best meet their needs.
Those responsible for developing and implementing this initiative should pay particular attention towards understanding deeply the people impacted by these changes and clearly understanding their specific needs.
The rollout of this scheme should ensure that tools and mechanisms to roll out the scheme are not only well suited to their purpose but that they are communicated clearly in a way that builds trust in the community that the scheme will provide for their needs.
The development of this initiative should ensure that the reasoning and judgements underpinning decisions about the scheme are based in sound clinical advice, evidence and best practice, and informed by autistic people and their families.
The scheme must be resourced with an adequate and skilled workforce to determine eligibility, define supports, and implement the scheme as intended.
Finally, those responsible for the scheme should ensure that they uphold their responsibility to people with disabilities impacted by these decisions to ensure that their unique and individual needs are met.
Thank you for your consideration.
Mathew Johnson
Executive Manager - Therapy and Clinical Services (Children)
Kate Cameron
Executive Manager - Therapy and Clinical Services (Adults)
References
Australian Government Department of Health and Aged Care. (2025). National Autism Strategy 2025–2031
Productivity Commission. (2011). Disability care and support: Productivity Commission inquiry report (Report No. 54). Australian Government Publishing Service
Commonwealth of Australia. (2022). Services, support and life outcomes for autistic Australians. Commonwealth of Australia. Recommendations – Parliament of Australia