02 October 2025
Submission to the House Standing Committee on Aged Health,
Aged Care and Disability – Re: The Inquiry into the Thriving Kids Initiative
Committee Secretariat PO Box 6021
Parliament House Canberra, ACT, 2600
Dear Committee Members,
Thank you for the opportunity to share our voices in an initiative as imperative as Thriving Kids.
Journey 2 Learn Neuro-inclusion (J2L) is a pioneering, passionate and person-centred not-for-profit which enables neurodivergent children to access mainstream schooling. J2L was founded in 2019, by a mother of four, Linda Osman, whose youngest son, diagnosed in July 2014, with Autism Spectrum Disorder Level 3, transitioned to a full-time student placement in mainstream school.
Since his commencement of his Early Years education in January 2018, he has developed adaptive, relationship-building and academic skills that were seemingly unimaginable before his integration into its program. Mrs Osman, now voluntarily operates J2L purpose-designed centre and serves 32 current children and their families, having changed the lives of many others who now maintain independent, full-time, mainstream school placements. J2L’s program model is highly individualised, transdisciplinary and evidence-based, designed and managed by a team of psychologists, speech pathologists, exercise physiologists, occupational therapists and social workers. Its foundational psychotherapies are delivered with consideration for sensory needs, demand tolerance and child belonging.
The children who access J2L services, most of whom have an Autism Spectrum Disorder alongside multiple other co-morbid lifelong conditions, are significantly misunderstood and under resourced. Thriving Kids, if designed in collaboration with neurodiverse individuals, their families, and
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the organisations that support them, has the opportunity to change this discourse. It must be sure to capture and provide for participants for the entire duration of their school entry journeys.
Even mild-to-moderate levels of disability, particularly in Autism, present with delayed development of adaptive skills, resulting in intense behavioural challenges that disrupt access to school and other community environments, outside of the child’s control. These may be learned in a period of weeks or require significant, ongoing intervention for some years. These debilitating difficulties, predominately in mainstream school settings, have been deemed unsuitable for NDIS support, and are beyond the capacity of education facilities to provide, leaving Thriving Kids as a sole lifeline.
Previous and existing support services for neurodiverse children remain inadequate. External supports and therapies are often barred from access, geographically or through reduced funding allocations. Current mainstream services (early childhood education, playgroups and schools) do not provide the high calibre training required for staff or student success. Further, segregated programs that isolate neurodiverse students from mainstream environments fail to prepare them for real-world integration, often exacerbating student anxiety and negatively impacting overall well-being.
Research demonstrates that the authentic inclusion of neurodiverse students in mainstream education, as called for by the United Nations’ Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities 24th Article (Convention On The Rights Of Persons With Disabilities, 2008), produces greater outcomes than those obtained in special schools or homeschool (Kurth & Mastergeorge, 2010). Improved quality of life, education performance, and social development have been evidenced for children included authentically (Boutot & Bryant, 2005). It also suggests authentic inclusion reduces the financial strains placed on external healthcare and educational agencies (Knapp & Jarbrink, 2001). Research outlines that implementing evidence-based support models is integral in these successes (Waddington & Reed, 2017).
With this in mind, J2L is thrilled that the focus of Thriving Kids appears to be toward inclusion in mainstream systems. However, the success of this transition into and through mainstream programs will rely on several key mechanisms, as outlined below:
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1. Structured Transition Preparation
The development and implementation of structured transition plans tailored to each individual child’s developmental needs should occur several months prior to entry into a mainstream environment. Evidence from Australian and international research shows that early, individualised transition planning significantly improves children’s adjustment, engagement, and school readiness, while reducing anxiety and associated challenges (Miller et al., 2025).
2. Graded Exposure
Graded entry into mainstream settings allows children to explore the new environment gradually and with success, aligning opportunities of socialisation and peer role modelling, without placing them in a new environment with new expectations and requiring new skills that are out of reach. Soft transitions provide autonomy, enhancing preparedness and easing the emotional challenges associated with new environments (Martin et al., 2021).
3. Collaborative Stakeholder Communication
Collaborative meetings between families, educators and therapists are crucial for the sharing of key information about the child’s strengths, needs and developmental progress, that informs the child’s Individualised Support Plan (ISP) and participation in mainstream environments. Multidisciplinary collaboration allows for efficient and accurate identification of goals, strategies and support needs, and ensures accommodations are tailored appropriately to the child’s unique development profile. Equal participation of families as partners in these meetings allows valuable insights into the child’s preferences, routines, and responses to interventions to be provided. Therapists contribute specialised expertise related to communication, behaviour, or sensory needs, and implementation of accommodation within the mainstream environment. While educators, on the other hand, provide practical knowledge of the classroom environment and curriculum demands. This collaborative approach facilitates the development of coherent, realistic, and contextually relevant ISP and enhances the likelihood of successful implementation within mainstream settings.
4. One-to-one Support Provided by an Expert Workforce
One-to-one (1:1) support significantly enhances the transition into mainstream settings in providing consistent, individualised assistance tailored to the child’s specific developmental and emotional needs. Personalised support provided by a professional, external to the mainstream setting and family, reduces anxiety and builds confidence, particularly for children who face challenges with new environments or routines, by fostering a sense of safety during transitions. 1:1
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support provides essential scaffolding of social, communication, and behavioural skills, and through consistent exposure, enables the gradual development of adaptive skills needed for successful participation in mainstream environments.
Limitations of executive functioning, impulse control and emotional regulation (directly characterised by an Autism diagnosis), result in significant challenges in actioning appropriate, therapist-taught strategies, without support. Understanding the strategies, recognising a need to apply them and then successfully managing competing distress to implement them is a complex, multi-step procedure, requiring abstract reasoning and interoception, additional deficits of many children’s disabilities. An expectation to apply this process (having rote learned it from clinicians) in community settings where sensory demands, social interactions and cognitive load also need to be managed is beyond the scope of many. The assisted application of these skills in the environments that neurodiverse children access daily, by trained expert staff, are distinct and irreplaceable therapeutic experiences. Through 1:1 support, the development and execution of functional skills is facilitated in dynamic, everyday contexts—an approach shown to improve inclusion outcomes and reduce behaviour-related school exclusions. As such, appropriately facilitating inclusion in a mainstream education setting drastically accelerates neurodiverse children’s progress toward their outcomes, often outpacing the shorter and less frequent sessions offered by traditional therapies.
Over time, the intensity of support may be gradually reduced, promoting the child’s autonomy and long-term success in inclusive settings.
A collaborative model involving families, educators, and allied health professionals creates consistent, goal-aligned support across all settings. This transdisciplinary coordination is supported by research advocating for integrated service delivery models, which enhance the effectiveness of interventions and support smoother transitions into mainstream environments (Campbell et al., 2024). By fostering collaboration and offering support, Journey 2 Learn ensures that children are not only accessing mainstream settings but are meaningfully engaged and equipped to thrive within them, drastically improving their well-being and that of their family unit. We hope that Thriving Kids will embody the many lessons we have learned and the countless hours of research we have read so that many more children and families across the country may do the same.
Find a complete list of references mentioned in-text on the page following.
Kindest,
The Journey 2 Learn Team
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References
Boutot, E. A., & Bryant, D. P. (2005). Social integration of students with autism in inclusive settings. Education and Training in Developmental Disabilities, 40(1), 14–23. JSTOR.
Campbell, C., Daly, C., & Boyle, J. (2024). Effective Practices in School Transitions for Autistic Children and Young People: A Literature Review and Case Study. International Journal of Educational and Life Transitions, 3(1), 5. https://doi.org/10.5334/ijelt.78
Convention On The Rights Of Persons With Disabilities (2008). https://social.desa.un.org/issues/disability/crpd/convention-on-the-rights-of-persons-with-disabilities-articles
Knapp, M., & Jarbrink, K. (2001). The economic impact of autism in Britain. Autism, 5(1), 7–21.
Kurth, J., & Mastergeorge, A. (2010). Academic and cognitive profiles of students with autism: Implications for classroom practice and placement. International Journal of Special Education, 25, 8–14.
Martin, T., Dixon, R., Verenikina, I., & Costley, D. (2021). Transitioning primary school students with Autism Spectrum Disorder from a special education setting to a mainstream classroom: Successes and difficulties. International Journal of Inclusive Education, 25(5), 640–655. https://doi.org/10.1080/13603116.2019.1568597
Miller, E. K., Franco-Jenkins, X., Duncan, J. T., Reynolds Reddi, A., & Ward, C. (2025). Strengthening education through equitable and inclusive evidence-based teaching practices: A scoping review. Education Sciences, 15(3), 266. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci15030266
Waddington, E. M., & Reed, P. (2017). Comparison of the effects of mainstream and special school on National Curriculum outcomes in children with autism spectrum disorder: An archive‐based analysis. Journal of Research in Special Educational Needs, 17(2), 132–142. https://doi.org/10.1111/1471-3802.12368
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