To the Thriving Kids Inquiry,
My name is Giarne Ashby. I am an Occupational Therapist, a parent to an autistic child, and I’m an autistic adult myself. I write this submission drawing from lived experience, clinical insight, and a deep understanding of the systemic barriers children and families face when navigating developmental and disability supports in Australia.
Clarifying Scope: Developmental Delay vs. Autism
The current framing of this inquiry separates “developmental delay” and “autism” in a way that is both inaccurate and exclusionary. Autism is not defined by delays; it is a different developmental profile. Many autistic children do not present with what would be medically termed a “delay”—they may have advanced skills in some areas, but still have significant needs in others e.g. social, sensory, or emotional development. Models that rely on a delay based eligibility criteria will actively exclude children with significant support needs. These children become the adults with mental health conditions, chronic illness, and limited participation—because they were failed and missed.
Against the Medical Model Framing
The entire framework of “mild to moderate developmental delay” is rooted in a deficit-based, medicalised understanding of childhood development. This approach ignores strengths-based and neurodiversity-affirming models that are more aligned with evidence and lived experience. Rather than labelling children based on outdated metrics of typical development, we must look at skill areas where support is needed and build environments that affirm difference—not treat it as pathology.
If Thriving Kids is meant to be about supporting the wider community, as part of Foundational Supports, then you must cease with models that limit eligibility criteria or funding on severity, pathology or thought forms that further marginalise.
In addition—the Autistic community does not use the descriptors “mild” or “moderate,” nor do the diagnostic criteria. Our needs fluctuate and are often dependent on both the demands and supports available. This language needs to be removed.
The social models of disability allow for whole people and communities to meet needs in accessible and inclusive ways—ways that do not encourage restrictive or further discriminatory thinking.
Community and Mainstream Access is Not Safe Yet
Community and mainstream services—from early childhood education to primary healthcare—are not yet consistently safe or affirming for neurodivergent children. The system is not working, and it is letting down even those who understand how to navigate it.
My own child, despite having a diagnosis, has experienced burnout twice from engaging with childcare and early education settings that were ill-equipped to support their needs—even with advocacy.
As a clinician, I knew how to advocate and navigate—but most parents do not have this background. They are relying on a system that does not understand their child and hoping that it will support them. You need to ensure this safety in any programming.
Intersectionality and Access
We cannot talk about thriving without talking about equity. Children who are First Nations, from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds, or whose parents also have disability, face multiple layers of systemic exclusion. These communities are too often spoken about but not listened to. Policy must be co-designed with, not for, these communities.
If families who have the privileges I have, are experiencing hardship trying to access supports and navigate mainstream systems, then what hope do our more marginalised families have? This programme must not only consider this—but be designed with this in mind.
Workforce Gaps and Risk of Harm
Workforce training is not a side note. Without it, we harm families. We saw this during the NDIS rollout—underqualified staff were funded without adequate vetting or training, and the community paid the price.
I sat in roundtable meetings listening to the plan for the NDIS. I raised the same questions many clinicians did: how do we ensure that we uphold the disabled community’s rights, while also ensuring supports and services are of a high quality and do not further create harm?
It was largely ignored—and we saw insufficiently trained people both in the Agency and within community providers “meaning well” but causing harm.
We must not repeat this. Any foundational support programme must prioritise high-quality training, ND-affirming practice, and lived experience representation at every level.
Neuroaffirming is Not a “Nice to Have”—It’s Essential
The reality is, the narrative around disability and autistic people has been harmful and steeped in so much encultured discrimination that this entire submission could be dedicated to it. We need to learn from the lessons of our predecessors and ensure that affirming supports are key to the foundation of any programming associated with Thriving Kids.
We know that therapies like ABA are evidenced to result in trauma and PTSD in autistic kids. This is not just found in research articles, but in the stories from autistic adults who endured the “well-intended” therapy in the 1990s and 2000s.
Our children deserve to not have history repeated. There are enough barriers to navigate as a parent to a child with a disability or developmental delay—never mind the grief and confusion associated with trying to access the right supports.
The government has a responsibility to ensure that therapies that appear to “lessen the challenges” or “improve outcomes” but do not provide long-term safety and instead create harm, are not quietly legitimised through funding. A randomised controlled trial can be
manipulated to reflect results that make great political speech fodder—but do not result in meaningful outcomes for our kids and their families.
While it is my opinion that these therapies should not be funded at all by the Thriving Kids programme, I believe wholeheartedly in the right for choice for families in deciding how best to support their child. Just as I would be devastated to find the only options funded were behaviourist in nature, I wouldn’t want our democratically founded government to do the same by limiting choices.
That said—there needs to be more access to understanding what is and is not a risk, so that compelling stories and sales pitches do not further harm our children.
The Problem with This Process
We already told you what we needed—during the foundational supports’ consultation, through roundtables, through inquiry after inquiry. We said: individualised, affirming, community-based support.
Not box-ticking programmes. Not pilots run by large providers with vested financial interest. And yet—here we are again.
When will the community be heard?
Did we learn nothing from the decades of our First Nations and Indigenous communities worldwide begging to be allowed to make the choices that impact them?
“Nothing about us without us” is not tokenistic. It is the difference between feeling empowered and feeling voiceless.
What Is At Stake
You are deciding the trajectory of children’s lives. Early support determines whether a child learns to communicate, whether they become independent in toileting, whether they feel safe in their body.
This is not abstract policy—it is the everyday reality of children and families. And it is too important to be shaped by political cycles or budget narratives dressed up as reform.
You must ensure that the design of this programme, and the systems that oversee and ensure its safety, are separate from the short-sighted nature of these cycles—and instead reflect the reality of the lifelong impacts that access (or lack thereof) to the right supports holds.
Final Thoughts
If you are going to shift children away from individualised funding models, you must have a plan that is better—not cheaper. Otherwise, you are actively harming Australian children and their families—and it is they who will wear that cost.
That plan must be co-designed, trauma-informed, culturally responsive, and built on actual best practice—not what’s convenient, and best-practice backs individualised supports.
You must stop asking the community for input if you are not willing to truly listen.
We need investment, not cutbacks disguised as strategy.
We need safety, not systems that retraumatise.
And we need people in positions of power to remember who they serve: not programmes, not votes—but children. The same children who are this country’s future.