3rd October 2025
Committee Secretary
Standing Committee on Health, Aged Care and Disability
Parliament House
CANBERRA
Canberra ACT 2600
I am grateful to be able to offer this submission to the House inquiry into the Thriving Kids initiative.
I am writing in a personal capacity, but from an informed position of extensive professional involvement with children, young people and adults who live with autism and other neurodivergent or development conditions, or whose lives have been significantly impacted.
I am a Social Worker (MA Social Work, 2010) and have worked in child protection and education since qualification, both in the UK and Australia.
I also have lived experience of living with autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, acquiring a diagnosis less than 5 years ago. I lived for over forty years without diagnosis or even suspicion of my neurodivergent condition.
The emphasis of the Labor Government on announcing the change based on financial rationale, without clarity on service provision or even a basic framework of what Thriving Kids will look like in practice, exposes the lack of humanistic consideration in the way this announcement has been made and is poor policy making;
The expectation that other states and territories will match funding, but carry the burden of service delivery and integration is wholly unrealistic, carries significant risk, and is not in keeping with principles of good faith acting in the context of a Commonwealth and Federation;
The terms of reference do not allow for a comprehensive and straightforward consideration of specific risk factors and unknown considerations in respect of children being moved from NDIS supports onto Thriving Kids. The long term implications for these children, and those that do not receive diagnosis until after the age limit, are not easily accounted for in the terms of reference provided. Solutions focused approaches are fundamentally flawed if they are unable to account for existing risk factors or potential outcomes difficult to predict;
Requesting that an inquiry be undertaken by a House Committee, rather than Senate, is demonstrative of a reluctance of the Government to be exposed to pluralistic elected representation, and undermines the principles of effective parliamentary
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scrutiny. This is not to cast any aspersions on the individual qualities of any Committee member, but it is a political reality that the Labor Government controls the numbers in the House, but not the Senate.
There are two core complications in respect of early identification and parent support. The first is the lack of clarity from the Government in respect of their defining mild to moderate development delay (and presumably autism). The other is the complexity in acquiring diagnosis of a medical condition, or identification of development delay, before the age of nine years old.
The Government has attempted to portray developmental delay, and autism, as being selectively temporary or short-term, compared to permanent, depending on presentation. The implication, heavily informed by Minister Butler’s own comments from time to time, is that autism may only have a short-term impact if clinically identified as mild to moderate.
This is not how autism works. It is a permanent condition, formed effectively from conception and influenced by an array of factors both prior to and after birth. I was born with autism; I will die with it.
The Government’s perspective belies the social impact on developmental delay and autism, in that social perceptions, stigma and outright prejudice can adversely affect a person with lived experience. Opportunities for safe functioning in society, access to education and employment, and other means of integration, can be severely curtailed depending on the people, communities or political structures the person interacts with. In the worst case scenarios, people living with neurodivergent conditions which might be considered milder can be exposed to trauma arising from the way they are treated. This can and does happen at school, where lack of resources, training and ethical guidance inhibits successful support for students where developmental delay occurs.
Pre-school diagnosis is very difficult to acquire. It is much more likely to occur once in contact with schools. Even if clearer signs were noticed at the age of four for example, given substantial delays from referral to diagnosis, it is likely that identification would not occur until the child was five. This in turn is likely to reduce the input of Thriving Kids based on the loose definitions provided.
The emphasis on supporting parents alone is also not realistic in terms of the general day-to-day living situation for children. Most children will be attending school full-time from age six. This means their interaction with schools will range anywhere between 30-40 hours a week (if school is taken to include travel on buses or after school care).
Any models of information or resourcing have to include and consider the integrated connection of education and family life, as well as other potential aspects such as health, cultural and community involvement.
Equity and intersectional issues are significant. Other cohorts that need to be included are rural/regional populations, lived experience of abuse/neglect, children in
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out-of-home-care. It is not clear how Thriving Kids will be accessible or adaptable to these particular cohorts.
Professional discrimination and simplistic thinking underpins poor support. There is a notable emphasis on health rather than broader integrated approach and support.
Lutruwita/Tasmania is a good example of the disconnect between diagnosis and ongoing services. The advocacy organisation, Autism Tasmania, lost funding in
- Instead, the State Government emphasised access to the Tasmanian Autism Diagnostic Service. There are extensive wait times from referral to diagnosis, and very little support systems available post-diagnosis. With no centralised advocacy, parents, children and professionals are left trying to manage a highly fractured system that is not equipped for effective service-delivery.
Furthermore, the lack of advocacy means that those with diagnosis still have to face complex issues of how they are viewed on a societal scale.
Teachers need resources, with an accounting of the realities of managing large classroom sizes with cohorts of neurodivergent students. The lack of adequate systemic support increases the risks of institutional discrimination and traumatising input. There are also issues about supporting students without disability with understanding the neurodivergent and developmental conditions of their peers. In these situations, it is immaterial as to the nature of being mild or moderate, it is entirely about how the student’s behaviour is observed and understood.
We need much better use of lived experience in professional roles, not just for policy development but also practical service delivery. This relies on improving guidance for professionals to actively acknowledge their own diagnosis with cohorts of children and parents they work with. The lack of ethical guidance can lead to practitioners being exposed in terms of codes of conduct and professional ethical systems (such as registered psychologists, for example). We want to be able to role model open conversations and acknowledge that people have the condition, not least to help develop greater flexibility for displaying empathy.
I frequently tell people, including students I work with, that I have autism and ADHD. I do this primarily to explain some of the ways these conditions can affect my communication and interaction. It is primarily a practical explanation to ease future conversations. However, I do this with very little regard given to the ways that this might be managed on a case-by-case basis. I do this without having a clear guide on the protections for me as a practitioner in exposing my medical diagnosis. It is a risk to tell.
It is possible that the Thriving Kids program may provide an opportunity for effective service provision for children with developmental delay, autism and other neurodivergent conditions. However, the sense of a fait accompli in this process undermines the faith that this transition can be managed well.
Many statements from the Government have betrayed either a careless indifference to the lived experiences of children and parents in relation to neurodivergent conditions, or a deliberate approach to manipulation misconception. Both are
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dangerous and increase the risk of harm in any process of transitioning children from one system to another.
Many questions about the impact of Thriving Kids in the longer term remained unanswered. For example, if a child is placed on the Thriving Kids system out of the NDIS, does this preclude them accessing the NDIS at a later date if more pronounced symptoms or issues develop? The assumption that accessing Thriving Kids is based on a diagnosis (or identification, it is unclear how this occurs) of ‘mild to moderate’, which may inhibit a future application to NDIS.
Neurodivergent conditions may apply for life, so what is the expectation of service support after the child turns nine years old?
If there are prohibitions on future access to services, because of the Thriving Kids threshold, won’t this become an incentive for parents to wait until their children are nine before seeking diagnosis? Otherwise, how does the Government anticipate managing this?
Without knowing the extent to which the selective interpretation of mild to moderate autism applies, how can the Government safely assess that $2 billion contribution is sufficient in the context of current service availability in states and territories?
The lack of detail or adequate rationale for change only adds to the breadth of questions that may be asked in the future. Limiting the scrutiny of this announcement is disempowering to parents and children who live with neurodivergent conditions, and suffer the ramifications of poorly resourced and ill thought out policy.
Building positive foundations for all children is a challenge of considerable size. No positive foundation can be built on bad reasoning, or bad faith. For all I know, Thriving Kids might turn out to be a positive contribution to support for children, but that will not occur if the Government does not alter its mindset to look beyond a purely financial consideration, or its misguided understanding of the realities of living with neurodivergent conditions, and open up to critical analysis and feedback.
I wish the Committee well with its endeavours.
Yours sincerely,
Jack Davenport
Lutruwita/Tasmania
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