Introduction
The Early Childhood Intervention Coordination Program (ECICP – Inner West) is a network of professionals working collaboratively to support children aged 0–12 with developmental delay or disability and their families. Our members include child and family workers, case workers, therapists, community development workers, inclusion professionals, early childhood educators, health professionals from the Department of Health, and transition support teachers (early intervention) from the Department of Education.
We welcome the opportunity to provide feedback on the proposed Thriving Kids Initiative (TKI). While we support the intent to improve early identification and access to support, we hold significant concerns regarding the proposed shift away from individualised, therapeutic support—particularly for children with developmental needs and mild to moderate autism.
Summary of Key Concerns
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The initiative risks reducing access to individualised therapy in favour of generic, system-based responses.
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Children with mild to moderate autism or developmental delay are no less in need of specialised supports than those with “significant” disability.
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Moving children out of the NDIS without clear, effective alternatives does not reduce need—it simply shifts responsibility onto already overstretched systems.
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Mainstream and community services such as GPs, maternal and child health nurses, early learning centres, and schools are not funded or equipped to deliver targeted therapeutic interventions.
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The TKI lacks a clear framework for professional competency, consistent service delivery, clinical governance, and accountability.
1. Importance of Individualised Therapy and Progress Monitoring
Children with developmental concerns benefit most from early, tailored intervention strategies designed and delivered by qualified professionals. Effective therapy:
- Targets the child’s specific goals and abilities
- Evolves as the child grows and their needs change
- Is supported by ongoing assessment, family engagement, and multidisciplinary collaboration
When children receive individualised, intensive support early in life, we see improvements in their communication, behaviour, self-care, social interaction, attention, and independence. Family involvement, guided by regular feedback from therapists, builds confidence and capacity in parents and carers to support their child effectively.
Generic or group-based models cannot deliver this level of targeted intervention. Providing general broad-based strategies or recommending parenting books in place of personalised support is inadequate and inequitable.
2. Misunderstanding of Autism and Disability
The assertion that only children with “permanent and significant” disability (including autism) will remain eligible for the NDIS reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of autism and other developmental conditions.
Autism is lifelong. The intensity of support required often varies over time, and even those with “mild” presentations can face significant functional challenges—especially in environments not designed for their needs. Many children with low to moderate autism thrive because of timely, individualised early intervention.
To remove access to these supports simply because a child does not meet a threshold of “permanence and significance” is both medically and developmentally unsound.
3. Mainstream Services Cannot Absorb This Shift Without Failing Children
The Thriving Kids Initiative proposes to build on existing services, including:
- Maternal and child health nurses
- General practitioners
- Early learning centres
- Community centres
- Schools
While these settings are valuable points of contact for families, they are already working at or beyond capacity. These professionals:
- Are not trained to deliver specialised developmental therapy
- Lack time and resourcing for complex case management
- Are not equipped to monitor therapeutic progress or respond to changing needs
- Schools and early childhood education and care centres do not have ratios that allow educators to hold space and support children struggling in the group setting.
Expecting mainstream professionals to replace specialist support sets them up to fail and places children at risk of receiving suboptimal or delayed interventions.
Additionally, with the NDIA nationally defunding the NDIS Early Childhood Approach Community Capacity building teams has weakened the scaffolding that supports communities, parents and carers with issues such as:
- Grief and loss at diagnosis
- Cultural shame, stigma and discrimination
- Navigation of service systems
- Free professional development training, support, communities of practice worker sessions and resources for any workers that engage with children to support optimal outcomes for children with disability and their families
The TKI initiative, will also occur six months after the new Department of Communities and Justice (DCJ) Community and Family Support (CAFS) program contract commences, being for a 5.5 year period. How is the TKI considered in the wider landscape of child and family service delivery?
3A. Timeframes, Workforce Gaps, and the Importance of Team-Based Approaches
We strongly recommend that the implementation of the Thriving Kids Initiative be significantly slowed down to give parents, services, and communities adequate time to understand and respond. At present:
- Educator and allied health positions remain vacant across multiple sectors, making it unrealistic to staff a new federally driven program with trained professionals within a year.
- Attempting rapid rollout risks compromising service quality and exacerbating workforce burnout.
- A best practice principle in early childhood intervention is teamwork—bringing together professionals from different disciplines around the child and family.
To achieve seamless services, key stakeholders must be resourced and supported to work collaboratively, ensuring families do not need to retell their story multiple times to multiple services. Without this scaffolding, service duplication and fragmentation are inevitable, leaving families unsupported and disengaged.
Case Studies
Case Study: The Critical Role of a Key Worker A three-year-old child was referred to early childhood supports by a health service due to concerns about limited play and social skills and significant communication delays. The child lived with both parents in an apartment, with the father working long hours and the mother—who was experiencing health challenges—as the primary caregiver. The family had recently arrived in Australia; the father spoke English while the mother primarily used the home language.
At the initial home visit, the caregiver appeared distressed, the home environment was unhealthy, and the child showed challenging behaviours such as throwing objects. The child rarely went outside, communicated only through babbling, and demonstrated delays in both languages, with limited play and social interaction skills.
Supports were put in place to improve the physical environment and provide parenting support. The family was linked to a pathways program and preschool. The case was presented to a
transdisciplinary team, and strategies focused on simple play, visuals, shared books, and regular visits to the park.
Over twelve months, the home environment improved markedly. The caregiver became more engaged and confident, enjoying moments with her child. The child began to use short phrases, engage in symbolic play, interact with peers, and demonstrate social gestures such as handshakes and verbal thanks.
Crucially, the key worker was the linchpin:
- Building trust and coordinating external supports
- Preventing the family—particularly the mother—from disengaging when participation felt overwhelming
- Ensuring services complemented rather than duplicated one another
This case illustrates that without a central coordinating role and trusted relationship, vulnerable families can easily fall through the cracks. The proposed TKI risks undermining this function if it prioritises generic service responses over individualised, relationship-based, and coordinated support.
3B. The Key Worker Model – Why It Matters
A key worker is a trained professional—typically an early childhood intervention specialist, allied health professional, or early childhood teacher —who acts as the main point of contact for a family. The key worker model is recognised as best practice in early childhood intervention, as outlined in national and international research.
Key workers:
- Hold professional qualifications in areas such as speech pathology, occupational therapy, psychology, social work, or early childhood education
- Work within a transdisciplinary team, drawing on the expertise of multiple professionals while providing consistent, relationship-based support to the family
- Build trust with parents and caregivers, coach them in evidence-based strategies, and coordinate services to avoid duplication and fragmentation
- Ensure interventions are tailored, goal-focused, and responsive as the child’s needs change
Without this role, families are often required to navigate multiple services independently, increasing stress, duplication, and the risk of disengagement.
4. A Lack of Clarity: Will the TKI Deliver Genuine Support?
There is limited information about the type of supports TKI will offer. This raises serious concerns, including:
- Will children receive individual therapy or only group-based interventions to reduce costs?
- Will families receive active, ongoing support or simply be sent strategies via email?
- Who will be responsible for monitoring children’s progress, reviewing goals, and adjusting supports?
- What training, funding, and clinical supervision will be provided to those delivering services under TKI?
- How will consistency and quality control be ensured across regions? In the current landscape there is the lack of research or measurement to measure impact of the early intervention systems.
If government funding is being withdrawn from the NDIS, it must be clearly demonstrated how TKI will provide equivalent or better support.
5. The Risk of Cost-Shifting, Not Cost-Saving
We challenge the premise that moving children with mild to moderate needs out of the NDIS will result in long-term savings. In fact:
- Without early, effective, individualised intervention, many children’s needs may escalate, requiring greater support later in life
- Mainstream systems, unprepared to meet these needs, will experience increased pressure, leading to burnout and high staff turnover
- Families may disengage from services altogether due to frustration, inequity, and poor outcomes
In other words: if children still require support, the costs are not avoided—they’re just shifted, often inefficiently, to systems that lack the capacity to manage them.
Questions for the Committee
We respectfully request the Committee address the following:
- How will the TKI guarantee the quality and individualisation of supports provided to children?
- Will there be national standards, training, and oversight for professionals expected to deliver interventions under TKI?
- What evidence supports the removal of NDIS eligibility for children with “mild to moderate” needs?
- How will families be involved in goal setting, progress tracking, and decisions about their child’s supports?
- Will the Initiative provide adequate funding to mainstream services to ensure they can effectively meet the increased demand?
Conclusion and Recommendations
The ECICP (Inner West) strongly supports the goal of improving outcomes for children with developmental concerns and disability. However, we urge the Committee to recognise that this cannot be achieved by:
- Undermining access to individualised, targeted support
- Shifting responsibility to underfunded, generalist systems
- Applying a narrow and medically inaccurate understanding of conditions like autism
Instead, we recommend:
- Maintaining access to the NDIS for children who require individualised therapeutic support, regardless of the “severity” label
- Resourcing mainstream systems appropriately if they are to play a greater role
- Embedding accountability, training, and clinical governance within TKI structures
- Co-designing TKI with input from professionals, families, and people with lived experience
All children deserve the chance to thrive. That requires the right support, at the right time, by the right professionals—not a diluted version of care driven by cost-saving measures.
On behalf of the Early Childhood Intervention Coordination Program (ECICP – Inner West)
Contact: Anita Pesa
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