Submission 279 — Queenslanders with Disability Network — Inquiry into the Thriving Kids initiative

Standing Committee on Health, Aged Care and Disability – Inquiry into the Thriving Kids Initiative

October 2025

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About Queenslanders with Disability Network (QDN)

Queenslanders with Disability Network (QDN) is a state-wide, not-for-profit organisation led by and for people with diverse disability and we are focused on advancing disability rights, inclusion and systemic advocacy in Queensland. QDN is the Executive Peak Body for people with disability in Queensland, providing overarching leadership and coordination across disability peak and representative organisations funded by Queensland Government. QDN operates a state-wide network of over 3,000 members and supporters all over Queensland. Guided by our motto “nothing about us without us.”

QDN ensures that people with lived experience of disability are central to shaping policies, services and supports. Our vibrant and dynamic membership is made up of people with diverse disability who are at the centre of everything we do. QDN as an organisation is in a unique position of representing people with a diverse range of disability.

QDN’s work is underpinned by a commitment to inclusion, co-design, collaboration, and innovation and is guided by the pillars of inform, connect, lead and influence. By partnering with communities, service providers, businesses, and government, QDN fosters systemic solutions that empower individuals, amplify the voices of people with disability, and create sustainable, inclusive systems of support, working toward a more equitable and inclusive Queensland.

Through a powerful and engaged network of individuals and 32 Peer Support Groups, QDN informs, leads and influences change on issues impacting the disability community. QDN’s extensive body of work includes connecting people through peer support groups, supporting future leaders through the Emerging Leaders Program, and influencing government policies and programs through targeted advocacy. QDN’s initiatives are co-designed and co-delivered with people with disability. QDN engages with diverse communities, including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, Culturally and Linguistically Diverse groups, and rural and remote populations across

Queensland. We believe that Queenslanders with disability need to be empowered active and valued citizens, and fully included in the economic, social, civic and cultural life of Queensland.

Executive Summary

QDN was engaged by the Queensland State Department of Families, Seniors, Disability Services and Child Safety to develop the Queensland Disability Stakeholder Engagement and Co-Design Strategy (the Strategy) as a priority action of the Queensland Disability Reform Framework. The Queensland Disability Reform Framework is a framework for coordinating disability reform in Queensland in response to the Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability (Disability Royal Commission) and the Independent Review of the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS Review). The Strategy establishes structures to put people with disability and stakeholders at the heart of reform processes and guide collaborative work between government and people with disability in Queensland (Queenslanders with Disability Network 2024).

As part of the work of the Strategy, QDN has supported or led four complementary bodies of work that have focused on foundational supports for children 0-9 that has included collaborative system design through a sector working group, sector wide community engagement, targeted deep dive engagement with families and carers, and engagement with key Queensland sector stakeholders including peak bodies, independent advocacy organisations and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and culturally and linguistically diverse organisations.

Taken together, these four streams of work provide a strong, multi-layered evidence base for reform. Families’ voices highlight what is and isn’t working on the ground; community forums demonstrate the shared priorities of Queenslanders across diverse regions; co-design work with sector leaders outlines the principles and elements of a new system; and targeted sector engagement provided key feedback from First Nations, culturally and linguistically diverse stakeholders and peak body and advocacy organisations with systemic expertise.

This submission represents a broad diversity of engagement which has included lived experience, community priorities, co-designed system models, and sector expertise.

Critical to the development, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of Thriving Kids is working in partnership with families, carers and people with disability. As the first of four targeted foundational supports recommended by the NDIS Review to be designed and implemented, this work will provide a blueprint for the other three areas. It is important that a nationally consistent approach, that is underpinned by clear principles, includes practical design elements that enable States and Territories to deliver placed based responses that are reflective to the needs of their communities and the resources to build a foundational supports system where all children are given the chance to thrive.

Recommendations:

QDN provides the following recommendations for consideration by the Committee:

1. Develop a national strategy for engagement and co-design with families, carers and children as part of the development of Thriving Kids program and more broadly to underpin the development, implementation and monitoring of foundational supports using the Queensland Stakeholder Engagement and Co-design strategy as a model.
2. Develop a set of national principles for Thriving Kids program drawing on work already undertaken including the Queensland Early Supports Foundational Supports Working Group and key evidence-based research that is holistic, family-focused and culturally inclusive.
3. Develop an implementation framework that balances the need for a level of national consistency AND enables jurisdictional level planning and delivery to be responsive to local context, needs and service systems.
4. Commonwealth, States and Territories to work together to a. Develop a plan for implementation that takes into consideration the phasing needed to deliver critical elements in timely way to meet existing current needs and demands for services in community.

b. Develop jurisdictional level implementation plans that enables each State and Territory to focus on different geographical needs of their community that may be unique to their state and location; c. Identify existing mechanisms and initiatives already in place in local communities that can be strengthened, scaled and supported. 5. Ensure the key elements of peer support for families, community connection, coordination, shared planning systems, key workers and information, navigation and advice is nationally consistent but locally delivered, with multiple entry points that is delivered in an accessible, culturally safe and culturally inclusive approach. 6. Introduce universal, consistent developmental screening in the first 2000 days and embed this in primary health and early childhood settings. 7. Reduce diagnostic wait times through improved referral pathways, clinical guidelines and local assessment capacity which also prioritises early responses to conditions such as Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD). 8. Ensure equitable access to allied health and address thin markets in rural/remote areas through a cross-departmental approach to commissioning as well as hybrid funding models (block funding + brokerage) to guarantee continuity. 9. Develop a comprehensive workforce strategy, including attraction and retention incentives for rural/remote areas, mentoring and supervision for graduates, and shared professional development across sectors and supports workforce integration through commissioning of services. 10. Invest in interoperable data systems to reduce duplication, improve outcomes tracking, and stop families having to retell their stories. 11. Develop a National Framework for monitoring, safeguards and outcomes reporting based upon best practice frameworks including The Nest and National Best Practice Framework for Early Childhood Intervention to guide design, delivery and evaluation.

Introduction

The Thriving Kids Inquiry comes at a pivotal time. The 2023 NDIS Review recognised the urgent need for a connected system of foundational supports for children and families who are not eligible for the NDIS or whose needs are not met through existing mainstream services (Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet 2023). In Queensland, this work is advancing under the Queensland Disability Reform Framework, which responds to the Disability Royal Commission and the NDIS Review. Central to this reform is the Queensland Disability Stakeholder Engagement and Co-Design Strategy, designed and led by Queenslanders with Disability Network (QDN), which establishes the governance and engagement structures to ensure that people with disability and their families are at the centre of reform.

This submission reflects QDN’s leadership role in progressing reform through the Co-Design Strategy, and draws upon four complementary streams of work that QDN has led or contributed to under the Framework:

1. Collaborative system design – The Early Supports Foundational Supports Working Group which was established in late 2024 in response to the recommendations of the NDIS Review, which called for the development of targeted foundational supports for children and families not eligible for the NDIS. Since October 2024, a coalition of organisations with deep expertise in early childhood, disability, family support and advocacy have been coming together to identify critical issues and solutions for Queensland. Convened under the Queensland Disability Stakeholder Engagement and Co-Design Strategy, the group held its first half-day workshop in October 2024, followed by a full-day design session in January 2025. These sessions produced a set of shared principles, assumptions, and draft design elements to guide the development of a national and state-level model of early foundational supports for children aged 0–9. The membership of the Early Supports Foundational Supports Working Group includes:
   • Autism Queensland
   • BUSHkids
   • C&K Association (Creche and Kindergarten Association)
   • Parenting Research Centre

• PeakCare
• Play Matters
• Queenslanders with Disability Network (QDN)
• Queensland Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Child Protection Peak (QATSICPP)
• Thriving Queensland Kids Partnership / Australian Research Alliance for Children and Youth (ARACY)
• Xavier
• Xstitch Health

The group has since served as a key reference body for government and the sector, ensuring that design of early supports is grounded in both lived experience and professional expertise, and that reforms are responsive to the needs of children, families, and communities across Queensland. These principles are:

- Individual child, family-led and community led
- Culturally-informed
- Responsive
- Equitable
- Integrated
- Holistic
- High-quality
- Sustainable

2. Statewide community forums – In February 2025, through the Strategy, QDN partnered with Department of Families, Seniors, Disability Services and Child Safety to host 11 community forums across Queensland with 581 participants, including people with disability, families, carers, advocates, service providers and government representatives. Foundational supports, mainstream services, and workforce were consistently ranked as top reform priorities. Participants emphasised integration across systems, equitable access for regional and First Nations communities,

workforce attraction and retention, and the need for clear, joined-up approaches between foundational supports and mainstream systems.

Following this, a further 10 community forums were held in May and June 2025 with stakeholders to specifically examine foundational supports for children aged under 9. These forums brought together 233 attendees across eight regional centres (Mt Isa, Longreach, Townsville, Gympie, Hervey Bay, Sunshine Coast and two in Brisbane) and two statewide online sessions. Participants included families, carers, advocacy organisations, service providers, community stakeholders, and representatives from local, state and federal government. Together, these discussions provided rich insights into what is needed to design a foundational supports system that is fit for purpose across urban, regional and remote contexts.

Feedback from these sessions included lack of coordination, lack of local diagnostic services and the need for a central place to get information. Parents and carers spoke of their fatigue and the physical and emotional toll that the system currently creates due to the lack of support and information, they raised concerns about the retention and attraction of the allied workforce and the need for approaches that were culturally safe.

QDN also heard feedback on what worked in their community. The importance of community-based solutions and peer support services for families was identified as important with participants including supports that were in place in Queensland prior to the introduction of the NDIS. Organisations connected to the community were identified as providing emotional and practical support.

Having services co-located and coordinated across education, health, early childhood and community services was also identified as important for people across Queensland communities. Without centralised resources families found it difficult to access the right sources of information and support for their children when accessing system entry points along the service journey pathway.

3. Targeted engagement with families – In July 2025, QDN engaged with 93 families across Logan, Rockhampton/Woorabinda, Mt Isa, and Longreach/Barcaldine/Blackall/Tambo to ask about their experiences. Families of children under nine with developmental delay or disability shared their experiences of navigating health, education, and community systems. Their stories revealed consistent themes: long waits for diagnosis and therapy, lack of culturally safe and equitable services, and parents who felt they had no support to understand what the next step was and talked about critical needs for someone to assist with the ‘next steps’ after a child’s diagnosis.

Families and carers noted that they needed support and information to navigate the system with localised assistance considered preferable. Services needed to be peer-led and focused on child-centred and play-based approach. Spaces needed to be culturally safe and appropriate. Families talked about the impacts of mental health and the impacts of lack of, or inconsistent delivery of, programs in their areas. Greater peer support for families and carers, locally based people to connect to reliable, accurate information and supports was a key message from this engagement, a one stop location for appropriate support.

4. Targeted engagement with independent advocacy organisations, peak bodies and First Nations organisations: QDN has also engaged with independent advocacy organisations, peak bodies and First Nations organisations to bring forward sector-wide insights on the barriers families experience, and to identify what systemic changes are needed to create inclusive, accessible and culturally safe foundational supports.

In shaping this submission, it is also important to acknowledge the broader body of evidence and expert consensus emerging nationally around early childhood supports. Recent research and sector input highlight the need for a system-wide response rather than program-by-program fixes. They emphasise that cycles of inequity and systemic trauma have contributed to developmental vulnerabilities and that reform must address these root causes through structural change, not just service expansion. Strong messages have also emerged about the importance of

lived experience in service and system design, the value of engaging children directly in shaping their supports, and the necessity of place-based and regional approaches that recognise the diversity of families and communities. Families need to be considered as the whole unit. Equally critical is embedding holistic, family-focused approaches that support parents, carers, and siblings alongside the child, ensuring capacity and capability are built at every level. Together, these insights underscore the importance of Thriving Kids being grounded in equity, cultural safety, neuro-informed practice, and integrated, accountable systems that deliver continuity for children beyond the early years.

Across the four streams of engagement that QDN has led as part of the Strategy there have been a range of key elements of service design that have been strong themes throughout include peer support, information and advice, critical touch points in a child’s life with mainstream services that can act as trigger points for early identification and therefore lead people into pathways to support, integration and coordination, wrap around supports, allied health and therapy and capacity building.

QDN acknowledges the diversity of perspectives, feelings and sentiments across the disability community in regards to foundational supports for this cohort which highlight the frustrations and concern that people have about the lack of clarity about who will be eligible, what levels of supports children and families will receive and the importance of maintaining the fundamentals of choice and control.

Evidence-based Information and Resources

Key themes that emerged from engagement in Queensland have highlighted the critical issues for families experiencing the absence of reliable, evidence-based information and navigation once developmental concerns were identified. Parents consistently described the moment of diagnosis as a “cliff edge.” While assessment often brought relief in validating parental concerns, families reported that it was followed by “nothing” — no clear next steps, no explanation of available services, and no guidance on how to access support. One parent from a rural community explained: “We got the diagnosis, and then nothing. I didn’t know where to go next.”

This lack of accessible information created paralysis for many families. Parents spoke of being left to “Google in the dark,” reliant on word-of-mouth or social media groups, while their children missed out on critical windows of early intervention. Families from culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) backgrounds faced compounded barriers: information was rarely available in community languages, interpreters were scarce, and stigma around disability within some cultural groups made it even harder to seek help. As noted previously, for First Nations families, cultural safety and trust were central. Families wanted information from providers who understood local contexts and who had long-term relationships with their community, rather than fly-in-fly-out practitioners, or practitioners who were only in their community for a short period of time before they left and were replaced by someone else.

At the same time, families pointed to examples where information and navigation were delivered well. Examples included one rural/remote community where playgroup coordinators arranged free speech assessments for all families — a small initiative that built trust and encouraged early help-seeking. In a metropolitan location, cultural community connectors with language, shared language and cultural understanding were guiding families through complex systems. In a rural/remote community, a locally based role in one of the health mainstream services was described as invaluable for “walking alongside” families and bridging gaps between hospital, school, and allied health services.

The working group’s draft principles address these gaps. The principle of “responsive – no wrong door” recognises that families should be able to enter the system through multiple points — a GP, school, playgroup, or community centre — and be connected seamlessly to the right supports. The draft design elements specify a navigation or key worker role, delivered collaboratively with families, as a critical mechanism to provide timely, individualised information and support. This aligns strongly with feedback across the engagement: the need for a trusted, local guide who can answer questions, validate concerns, and broker access to supports across health, education, and community systems. Families pointed to the importance of local and provided localised knowledge and support, helping to identify the best information and resources for carers and families of children with disability. Localised services across Queensland were identified

as having a number of key attributes which made their programs successful within the community.

Research and feedback through engagements highlighted the need for stronger public awareness and screening mechanisms to help parents and caregivers recognise developmental concerns earlier. Many do not know what to look for, or feel unsure about raising concerns. Primary Health services play a critical part in the early days of a child’s life with touchpoints such as immunisations that could be used to provide developmental information and screening.

Another key element of the design and implementation of Thriving Kids based upon feedback is the need for a holistic, family focused approach that builds capacity and capability of families. As one participant putit: “Emphasis should be placed on capacity building, ensuring that people with disability are the first to identify gaps and needs. Their authentic voices must be included in decision-making processes to influence change.”

A framework for reporting, monitoring and measuring outcomes and an approach that guides cross sector planning to deliver accountability across Government and community services is critical. The system also needs clear safeguarding mechanisms that build or align with existing mechanisms and pathways for complaints and system responses to ensure safe, quality service delivery.

The Nest, Australia’s first evidence-based framework for child and youth wellbeing, developed by the Australian Research Alliance for Children and Youth (ARACY) after consultation with over 4,000 children, families, practitioners and leaders. The Nest conceptualises wellbeing across six interrelated domains — being loved and safe; having material basics; being healthy; learning; participating; and having a positive sense of identity and culture. It emphasises that a child’s development is shaped not only by individual circumstances but also by their family, community, and broader systems and environments.

The Nest is already in use across Queensland. Children’s Health Queensland Hospital and Health Service has adopted it to guide population health planning, and Logan Together has applied it in place-based work. It has also underpinned initiatives such as

the Queensland Family and Child Commission’s Youth Summits, the Families in Focus project on children with disability, and engagement models for Head to Health Kids. The Nest is therefore not a theoretical construct, but a proven, practical framework being applied in local, regional, and statewide initiatives.

Ensuring children with disability and families are engaged and the voices of children including First Nations children and children from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds is another important element. The work of Murdoch Children’s Research Institute Voice of the Child provides a framework for ensuring that children are meaningfully involved in matters that concern them (Murdoch Children’s Research Institute 2025). Additionally, the work of ARACY through the Families in Focus provides findings and recommendations for consideration through their application of The Nest to capture the experiences of families of children with disability (Coles, Thorpe and Chawla 2025).

The National Best Practice Framework for Early Childhood Intervention (May 2025) is also a framework for consideration and was commissioned by the Commonwealth Department of Social Services and developed by the University of Melbourne with partners including ARACY, the Secretariat of National Aboriginal and Islander Child Care (SNAICC), Children and Young People with Disability Australia (CYDA), Association for Children with Disability (ACD), and the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute. It identifies four universal principles: rights-based, relationship-based, strengths-based, and ecologically-based, and ten key principles grouped around being child- and family-centred, culturally safe, diversity-affirming, inclusion and participation, teamwork, community-focused, outcomes-focused, and evidence-informed.

It is critical that the development of Thriving Kids considers that families need a central, trusted, culturally safe source of information and navigation, embedded within a holistic wellbeing framework to ensure they are empowered to act early, engage in timely supports, and set their children on a thriving trajectory.

QDN’s work identified the need for trusted community connectors that were found in these regions as an important core of foundational supports for carers and families of

children between the ages of 0-8. There is also evidence to suggest that localised hubs co-designed by carers and people with lived experience are capable of being better providers of services as solutions are grounded in the lived experience and local context highlighted in the programs mentioned (Coles, Thorpe and Chawla 2025).

Effectiveness of current (and previous) programs and initiatives

The evidence from families and stakeholders presents a mixed picture: there are bright spots of effective programs, which are locally based, many driven by local leadership – an individual or group who see a need and look to create solutions and pathways to address the challenges and gaps in services which sometimes leads to short-term, or limited reach. Alongside this, there are families who report encountering fragmented, inaccessible services. The feedback also included the gaps that have been left by programs and initiatives that existed prior to the NDIS, that delivered effective models of support to families, particularly in the areas of family peer support, information, linkages to information and the practical next steps along the journey.

Multidisciplinary early intervention programs which run across numerous Queensland communities with a single point of access for anyone who needed support were identified through the engagement. Mechanisms such as Local Level Alliance Coordinators used to facilitate cross-agency networking and engagement opportunities were identified as important system structures for community level networking. Different mechanisms also established at a local level by individual local leaders for specific Allied health discipline professionals were also identified as structures which delivered a more coordinated and integrated approach to service delivery as well as workforce professional peer support however this was not a systematic approach and reliant on individuals to establish.

When asked about what works more specifically, families point to a small number of programs and services that offered continuity, integration, and responsiveness which included free, multidisciplinary allied health support for children in regional and remote Queensland that are approachable, family-centred, and effective at delivering integrated

assessments and therapy even before children entered the NDIS. Educational precincts with a focus on strengthened education engagement and attendance through case coordination were also highlighted by families and carers as an important resource that would assist because they provided a centralised source of information and support that was locally based.

One rural parent explained: “I didn’t have to go to five different places – they had it all under one roof.”

Similarly, the Early Childhood Development Programs (ECDPs) were highlighted for the support provided for children’s transition from kindy into school. These programs were valued not only for therapy provision but also for the way they collaborated with schools to ensure a smooth handover. Parents expressed distress about reductions in these programs and subsequent impacts on their child’s readiness for school.

The 2025 Voice of Queenslanders Report noted that adequate foundational supports are a requirement for people who may otherwise fall through the cracks (K. K. Chapman 2025).

Community-led initiatives also stood out. Services embedded in culturally inclusive community services were seen as a trusted, culturally safe space where families could access speech and occupational therapy, connect with peers, and receive practical advice. Its success lay in being locally driven, culturally responsive, and relational rather than transactional.

Families across regions described waiting 12 to 18 months for paediatricians, psychologists, or speech pathologists — delays that meant children “aged out” of supports before they even began. FIFO or locum models meant families had to repeat their stories to new practitioners, eroding trust and continuity, particularly amongst First Nations and CALD communities. Programs were often short-term or pilot-based, leaving families feeling abandoned when funding cycles ended. And in some cases, programs were delivered in siloed ways, with little coordination between health, education, and community services, forcing parents into the role of “messenger” between systems.

The working group’s draft design elements provide a framework to overcome these weaknesses. The hub model is recommended as a structural response, providing co-located services that reduce fragmentation and travel burdens. The emphasis on integrated, multi-agency responses and holistic wraparound supports directly addresses the silos families described. Importantly, the principle of sustainability recognises that programs must be funded in ways that provide continuity and certainty for families, not reliant on short-term grants.

This aligns with the work done by QDN over the course of its engagement with carers and families of children with disability. Participants from outside of Brisbane frequently highlighted hubs within their communities that offered support for carers and families of children with disability.

One rural location through the mainstream state service system has established an Education Precinct that has core functions to promote integration, coordination of joined up services and supports, connection and approaches to early identification and intervention.

Within urban areas such as Brisbane, there were suggestions that programs such as roundtables with allied health professionals, assessments done by Education Queensland and family-led service models were seen as being better before the implementation of the NDIS. It was noted in this feedback that people now felt more individualised and on their own. The lack of peer support for families and carers added stress when trying to find the right support. Awareness of programs but also of what support was available for carers and families themselves. Without this knowledge some carers and families highlighted the isolation that can come from a diagnosis of development delay or autism within their own families, causing an increase in mental stress.

While participants highlighted the benefits of local programs it was also suggested that the issue with these programs and initiatives was knowing that they are out there.

Programs identified in the previous section were proven to be effective in providing support at the local level, but the concern remains that these programs are not

communicated to carers and families when diagnosis is first made. Therefore, leading to the carer or family to find the information on their own, adding to the pressure on the carer and the family to find the appropriate information to assist.

Thriving Kids needs to deliver an integrated and effective program through embedding timely follow-up of referrals, reviewing clinical guidelines to shorten delays in intervention, and resourcing hubs to provide accessible, family-friendly services in high-need areas. Early intervention for Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) requires greater emphasis, given its prevalence in tertiary care systems and the lack of adequate early responses.

Beyond this, programs that provide localised support that are inclusive of carers or families and engagement from across health, education and social service professionals appear to provide positive benefits for people who have children who have been diagnosed with development delay or a disability.

Identify Equity and Intersectional Issues

Equity and intersectionality have emerged as central themes across all four workstreams. Families, community members, co-design partners, and advocacy organisations consistently emphasised that the current system not only fails to deliver timely supports but also compounds disadvantage for children from First Nations and CALD communities.

As noted, First Nations families who engaged spoke of the importance of cultural safety, trust, and continuity in service delivery. Many described situations where services “came and went” with fly-in fly-out professionals, eroding trust and creating barriers to engagement. One grandparent carer said: “They don’t stay long enough to know our kids, and by the time they understand, they’re gone.”

First Nations families spoke of the need of ongoing engagement and trust building as well as good communication were the key. They would also like to see improved communication between different service providers to assist in building connection with the different service entry points. There were also concerns about being unable to get in-

home supports despite having money for a support. This added strain to families and carers because of the added stress of trying to find supports without any assistance.

CALD representatives spoke of lack of accessibility of information as well as the stigma from having a child with disability and once overcoming the stigma that was sometimes present being made to wait over long periods of time for assistance which left many wondering why they made an effort to engage services in the first place.

Across the four streams of engagement, some key themes for both First Nations and CALD families and carers have included

• inequity due to the financial costs of travelling to assessments,
• families on temporary or non-citizen visas highlighted lack of eligibility for the NDIS because their children weren’t born in Australia,
• lack of integrated services, noting that they wanted information in the places where they already visited with children and the need for better coordination between service providers;
• need for services to be holistic so that if more than one child needed support they can receive support from the same service providers.
• Need for sustainability.

Families from culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) backgrounds described being unable to access interpreters, resources in their first language, or culturally appropriate services.

Feedback also highlighted how inequities intersected with poverty, geography, and stigma. Parents spoke of being forced to choose between paying for assessments and buying groceries, of travelling hundreds of kilometres to access allied health services, and of delaying help-seeking due to shame or fear of judgment.

Additionally feedback across the engagement reinforced equity as a statewide priority. Participants highlighted the urgent need for accessible services in rural and remote areas, and for culturally safe, First Nations-led initiatives and it is critical that this equity

extends to mainstream systems such as health and education, not just specialist services.

Critical issues for children who are part of the child safety system was also identified and the importance of equity of access to services and supports for this group and the need for targeted strategies.

The National Best Practice Framework for Early Childhood Intervention adds further authority. It identifies cultural safety and diversity-affirming practice as universal principles of best practice, ensuring that services are rights-based and inclusive of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families, CALD families, and neurodiverse children (Moore, Imms and Luscombe 2025).

Key issues that have been raised that impact on equity and intersectionality included:

• Turnover of staff in rural and regional areas;
• Gaps in early intervention programs and gaps in school-based supports;
• Funding limitations with NDIS and the Patient Travel Subsidy Service (PTSS) sometimes not covering the cost of travel;
• Cost of assessments were considered key barriers for uptake in services;
• Culturally sensitive programs sometimes didn’t exist;

Positive approaches have included providing culturally inclusive services designed to be led by peer supports to help families and carers from First Nations and CALD background receive support as they navigate foundational supports and the NDIS. There are a range of existing approaches identified that bring education, health, community and settlement services together to make it easier for families and carers with young children to find the services they need. Hubs provide services such as accessibility programs, playgroups, early childhood development and peer support for families to assist children with disability but also their families and carers.

Ensuring that anyone using the service is not left to navigate the service on their own will be key to the success of any proposed programs.

Gaps in Workforce Support and Training

A strong and capable workforce is the backbone of any Thriving Kids model, yet current workforce gaps present one of the greatest barriers to achieving timely and equitable support for children and families. Across Queensland, families, practitioners and system leaders have all identified workforce shortages, high turnover, and variable quality as ongoing challenges. These issues are particularly acute in regional and remote areas, where services rely heavily on fly-in fly-out staff, locum arrangements, or newly graduated professionals without adequate supervision. Families frequently described the frustration of having to “start again” each time a practitioner left, undermining trust, continuity, and children’s progress.

Families consistently reported long waits and high turnover, while service providers and advocates identified systemic workforce shortages and gaps in training. Key workforce challenges were identified in regional and rural areas of Queensland, such as the transience of the workforce which increased difficulty in building relationships with local communities, particularly those in First Nations communities. Situations where newly trained allied health professionals were seeing people with more complex needs were also highlighted, due to workforce shortages in these regions. Without improved commitment to settling and building the workforce, people with disability in regional and remote areas will not get the level of support they need from this initiative.

Workforce pressures are not limited to allied health. Early childhood educators, teachers, and GPs also reported feeling under-prepared to recognise and respond to developmental concerns, leading to late identification, exclusionary practices, or inappropriate referrals. This lack of confidence across mainstream touchpoints means that opportunities for early intervention are often missed, and families are left to coordinate fragmented care themselves.

Solutions to these challenges must go beyond piecemeal recruitment initiatives and instead focus on creating a sustainable, well-supported, and neuro-informed workforce. This requires investment in attraction and retention strategies — such as relocation incentives, scholarships, mentoring programs, and housing support — to encourage

skilled professionals to live and work in rural and regional communities. Equally important is building professional pathways that are relational and transformational rather than transactional: embedding supervision, communities of practice, and long-term learning organisations that make the sector attractive as a career, not just a job. The need for workforce strategies that focus on a shared approach and plan across health, education and disability is critical. Different models of commissioning need to be looked at that enable collaboration, shared resources and ways of leveraging the existing skilled workforce as well as strategies that focus on building the pipeline of skilled professionals through the university and vocational education sectors. Thin markets undermine the sustainability of services, particularly when funding relies on competitive tendering and hybrid commissioning models need to be considered to deliver guaranteed service and supports in underserved communities. Local Level Alliances are an existing structure that could be leveraged.

The National Best Practice Framework for Early Childhood Intervention provides a benchmark here, setting out teamwork, collaborative practice, and family-centred, strengths-based approaches as essential professional standards. Embedding these principles into pre-service training and ongoing professional development will ensure that workers across health, education, and community systems share a consistent approach to supporting children and families.

As highlighted previously, The Nest wellbeing framework further strengthens this workforce agenda by providing a shared language and outcomes framework. Workforce training can be built around the six wellbeing domains — being loved and safe, having material basics, being healthy, learning, participating, and having a positive sense of identity and culture — helping professionals across disciplines align their practice and measure impact in holistic ways. Tools such as ARACY’s Common Approach® demonstrate how this shared language can be used in everyday practice, giving professionals confidence to engage families in strengths-based conversations about wellbeing, rather than deficit-focused assessments (ARACY 2025).

A further area of development is adopting a neuro-informed approach, as highlighted in recent sector advice. This goes beyond trauma-informed practice to encompass an

understanding of brain development, resilience, and the impacts of systemic inequity on child development. Embedding neuro-informed frameworks across training and practice will give professionals the tools to better support children in everyday settings, particularly during transitions, and ensure that services can meet the diverse needs of all families.

Building a Thriving Kids workforce requires a dual focus: attracting and retaining skilled professionals and equipping the entire workforce — from allied health to educators to GPs — with the knowledge, tools and cultural capability to deliver holistic, integrated, family-centred support.

Communities across Queensland have managed to close gaps in workforce in some areas, but there is still inconsistency in services from region to region. Without a considered effort to reduce these gaps, the services provided by the proposed Thriving Kids Program will be afflicted with the same level of inconsistency and suffer the same service issues that currently exist.

Domestic and International Policy Experience and Best Practice

QDN, through its leadership of the Queensland Disability Stakeholder Engagement and Co-design Strategy, in partnership with Queensland Department of Families, Seniors, Disability Services and Child Safety, is a blueprint for how large-scale reforms can and must be shaped in partnership with the people they are intended to serve. This strategy established governance structures, community forums, and co-design working groups that have elevated lived experience alongside professional and sector expertise. It has ensured that reform directions in Queensland are not top-down but are informed by families, people with disability, and frontline organisations working together. The approach has delivered practical outputs — such as co-designed principles, service design models, and statewide community priorities — while also building trust and capability across government and community.

Integration of models is likely to provide the best chance of success for the program. Throughout Queensland, feedback provided to QDN highlighted that the best programs were those that integrated health, education and social services. Participants in some regions noted a lack of integration of services in their community that led to carers and families not accessing all the services available to them due to the lack of knowledge that they exist.

Being able to build workforce capability to respond to developmental needs while also integrating localised knowledge in the delivery of services will be vital. As highlighted in previous sections, integrated services were much preferred in comparison to those that provided partial services.

Workforce consistency plays an important role in this, and for rural and remote communities across Queensland there is considerable evidence to suggest that without a consistent workforce, programs for children with developmental delay or autism will have gaps that will reduce their effectiveness.

Mechanisms for Children to Transition Through Mainstream Systems

Families consistently describe the current service landscape as fragmented, confusing, and inconsistent. At every transition point — whether from home to kindy, kindy to school, or moving from early childhood into the primary years — there are opportunities for children to fall through the cracks. Parents often report becoming the “messengers” between systems, carrying information from GPs to schools to therapists, because no one else takes responsibility for coordination. This lack of integration places enormous strain on families and frequently results in children missing out on the right support at the right time.

Designing a Thriving Kids model requires moving beyond fragmented programs towards a whole-of-system response. Integration must be embedded as a structural feature, not left to chance or individual goodwill. This means funding the “glue” that holds services together — navigators, key workers, and coordination roles that ensure families

experience continuity, not disconnection. It also requires commissioning arrangements that reward collaboration across health, education, disability, and community services, rather than reinforcing silos. Embedding transition planning within all early childhood and school programs. Early intervention allied health is key so that carers and families of children with developmental delay and/or autism can access the services offered in their community as part of successful early intervention. As highlighted across QDNs engagement work, these services are not always available, and if they are they are sometimes not known by carers and families who would be best placed to use them. If planning is not undertaken during the early childhood phase, then the gaps in service delivery begin to widen, impacting on the opportunities for children with developmental delay and/or autism to integrate into mainstream services and causing stress for families and carers who must go across multiple service providers to support their children.

Participants noted that shared assessment pathways across health, education and community services would help children. It was common to hear from participants across Queensland communities about the importance of these programs and the gaps that existed if these types of pathways didn’t exist locally or were impacted due to inconsistencies like workforce retention.

Looking ahead, Thriving Kids must also extend continuity beyond the early years, ensuring supports continue through primary school and beyond. Families highlighted the “cliff” at age eight or nine, when children not eligible for the NDIS lose access to support. Schools must become central hubs of integrated services, aligned with national reforms such as the Better, Fairer Schools Agreement, ensuring children continue to receive support into the middle years. Building parental capacity before the age of eight will also help ensure families have the skills and confidence to sustain support even when formal systems fall away. Without continuity, family’s risk being forced back into crisis-driven systems such as child protection or youth justice.

The National Best Practice Framework for Early Childhood Intervention highlights teamwork, participation in everyday settings, and inclusion as hallmarks of effective early childhood practice. These principles reinforce the importance of designing systems where services are delivered in the natural environments of children — kindergartens,

schools, community hubs — rather than requiring families to navigate multiple disconnected clinics.

The Nest framework provides the outcomes-based lens to ensure integration is more than rhetoric. By measuring child wellbeing across six domains, The Nest allows governments and services to track whether children are truly thriving through transitions, not just whether a referral has been made. This shifts accountability from inputs to outcomes.

Practical examples of service integration and coordination already exist; however, they are not system-wide nor are they located in all communities. The need for improved integration of services from the first system of entry points along the service journey pathway, of greater support for workforce training and incentives to stay and support for carers and families to highlight the availability of services has come from QDNs work. For Thriving Kids to work, being able to undertake feedback loops that integrate the lived experience of those within the program and being able to act on that feedback will be crucial to its success.

Integration must also be culturally safe and equitable. For First Nations communities, locally led, self-determined services are critical to building trust and ensuring continuity. For CALD families, access to interpreters, translated materials, and bicultural navigators are essential. For rural and remote communities, hybrid models of face-to-face and digital hubs can ensure access even in thin markets.

Develop interoperable data systems that track progress and needs across settings. This is a problem that impacts many people with disability, not just children, as people with disability are required to tell their story repeatedly whenever they interact with a new service. Integrating data systems so that progress and needs can be understood without having to retell the history of the child with disability would go a long way to ensuring those children are receiving consistent care while reducing the stigma and trauma of having to start from the beginning when looking for support.

Seamless transitions and integrated systems are not optional extras — they are the foundation of a Thriving Kids model. Without them, families remain the glue that holds

fragmented systems together. With them, children and families experience continuity, holistic care, and the opportunity to thrive at every stage.

Recommendations

1. Develop a national strategy for engagement and co-design with families, carers and children as part of the development of Thriving Kids program and more broadly to underpin the development, implementation and monitoring of foundational supports using the Queensland Stakeholder Engagement and Co-design strategy as a model.
2. Develop a set of national principles for Thriving Kids program drawing on work already undertaken including the Queensland Early Supports Foundational Supports Working Group and key evidence-based research that is holistic, family-focused and culturally inclusive.
3. Develop an implementation framework that balances the need for a level of national consistency AND enables jurisdictional level planning and delivery to be responsive to local context, needs and service systems.
4. Commonwealth, States and Territories to work together to a. Develop plan for implementation that takes into consideration the phasing needed to deliver critical elements in timely way to meet existing current needs and demands for services in community. b. Develop jurisdictional level implementation plans that enables each State and Territory to focus on different geographical needs of their community that may be unique to their state and location; c. identify existing mechanisms and initiatives already in place in local communities that can be strengthened, scaled and supported.
5. Ensure the key elements of peer support for families, community connection, coordination, shared planning systems, key workers and information, navigation and advice is nationally consistent but locally delivered with multiple entry points that is delivered in accessible, culturally safe and culturally inclusive.
6. Introduce universal, consistent developmental screening in the first 2000 days and embed this in primary health and early childhood settings.

7. Reduce diagnostic wait times through improved referral pathways, clinical guidelines and local assessment capacity which also prioritises early responses to conditions such as Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD).
8. Ensure equitable access to allied health and address thin markets in rural/remote areas through a cross-departmental approach to commissioning as well as hybrid funding models (block funding + brokerage) to guarantee continuity.
9. Develop a comprehensive workforce strategy, including attraction and retention incentives for rural/remote areas, mentoring and supervision for graduates, and shared professional development across sectors and supports workforce integration through commissioning of services.
10. Invest in interoperable data systems to reduce duplication, improve outcomes tracking, and stop families having to retell their stories.
11. Develop a National Framework for monitoring, safeguards and outcomes reporting based upon best practice frameworks including The Nest and National Best Practice Framework for Early Childhood Intervention to guide design, delivery and evaluation.

Summary

Across Queensland, carers and families have taken the time and effort to provide feedback on what is and isn’t working for children with developmental and/or autism in their communities. The feedback provided on these services can play a vital role in the development of the Thriving Kids program and its implementation.

Carers and families want to see improved integration to services and better support for the workforce, particularly in rural and remote communities. Without these improvements, the Thriving Kids program will risk the same problems that currently exist for foundational supports in Queensland.

There are many great organisations across Queensland providing support for children with developmental delay and/or autism. It is these organisations that offer the

grounding for the Thriving Kids program and can make it a success if integration of services is prioritised.

As highlighted by the feedback received by QDN and the principles for targeted early supports. The proposed Thriving Kids program can’t just be focused on health outcomes there must be an effort to integrate positive social outcomes for children as well.

References

ARACY. 2025. The Common Approach. Accessed October 3, 2025. https://www.aracy.org.au/the-common-approach/.

Chapman, K., Kendall, E., Ambrose, E., Barker, R. 2025. The Voices of Queenslanders with Disability. Research Report, Southport: Griffith University.

Coles, Laetitia, Karen Thorpe, and Jasneek Chawla. 2025. Understanding the experiences and research priorities of children with disability and their families in a hospital setting in Australia: A novel multi-nodal participatory framework. Research, Brisbane: Life Course Centre.

Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet. 2023. Working together to deliver the NDIS - Independent Review into the National Disability Insurance Scheme: Final Report. Review, Canberra: Commonwealth of Australia.

Every Australian Counts. 2025. Families, Carers and People with Disability Speak Out About “Thriving Kids” Changes. 3 October. Accessed October 3, 2025. https://everyaustraliancounts.com.au/families-carers-and-people-with-disability-speak-out-about-thriving-kids-changes/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=Fri+Oct+03+2025&utm_campaign=NDIS+News+Thriving+Kids+survey+report+psychosocial+opinion+.

Moore, T, C Imms, and D Luscombe. 2025. National Best Practice Framework for Early Childhood Intervention. Framework, Melbourne: University of Melbourne.

Murdoch Children’s Research Institute. 2025. Centre for Community Child Health. Accessed October 3, 2025. https://www.ccch.org.au/our-work/project/voice-of-the-child/.

Queenslanders with Disability Network. 2024. Queensland Disability Stakeholder Engagement and Co-Design Strategy. Strategy, Brisbane: Queenslanders with Disability Network.