House Standing Committee on Health, Aged Care and Disability
Parliament House Canberra ACT 2600
Submitted via: https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/OnlineSubmission
3 October 2025
Dear House Standing Committee on Health, Aged Care and Disability,
Re: Thriving Kids Consultation
Inclusion Australia is the national peak organisation representing the rights and interests of Australians with an intellectual disability and their families. Founded more than 70 years ago in 1954, our mission is to work to make sure people with an intellectual disability have the same opportunities as people without disability.
Our strength is in our national representation and our connection to our community. We have a member organisation in every state and territory across Australia, collectively reaching many thousands of people with an intellectual disability and their families:
- ACT Down Syndrome and Intellectual Disability (ACT DSID)
- Council for Intellectual Disability (NSW)
- Developmental Disability WA (DDWA)
- Inclusion Northern Territory (Inclusion NT)
- Parent to Parent (P2P, Queensland)
- South Australian Council on Intellectual Disability (SACID)
- Speak Out Advocacy (Tasmania)
- Victorian Advocacy League for Individuals with Disability (VALID).
Thank you for the opportunity to respond to this consultation. We welcome the Australian Government’s commitment to improving early childhood supports for children with developmental delay and autism. As part of the design and rollout of the Thriving Kids initiative, we urge the government to deliver robust and tailored evidence-based supports, allow adequate time for co-design, maintain the integrity of the foundational supports vision from the NDIS Review, and ensure a seamless transition onto the NDIS for children with an intellectual disability. We also note our endorsement of Children and Young People with Disability Australia’s (CYDA) recommendations, in their response to the Parliamentary Inquiry into Thriving Kids Initiative, and refer to their recommendations in our submission.
Design Thriving Kids to deliver robust, tailored, evidence-based supports
Effective early intervention is critical in supporting children’s development and setting them up for the best possible future. Research consistently shows that addressing developmental concerns in the early years can significantly improve long-term outcomes.
We echo CYDA in urging attention to existing community expertise around effective supports. This includes ensuring supports are neuroaffirming and guaranteed, as well as being tailored to individual needs and providing choice and control. Families also need support, including accessible, nationally consistent information so they can be the best advocates for their children. These supports should be delivered by trusted, local organisations with established relationships within their communities.
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Allow sufficient time for co-design
The government’s target to begin changes from July 2026 is highly ambitious. We share the concern of our colleagues at CYDA that children may be diverted out of the NDIS before Thriving Kids is fully ready, leaving them without vital supports. If this happens, there is a very real risk many children and their families will fall through the cracks. We agree with CYDA that the Agency must guarantee that children are not removed from the NDIS until Thriving Kids supports are fully in place.
In the last 10–15 years, people with disability, their families and Disability Representative Organisations have witnessed a number of major reforms, of which the NDIS is the most significant - and we have direct, contemporary experience of what has worked and what has not. For Thriving Kids to genuinely meet the needs of children and their families, it is critical this expertise is meaningfully leveraged in its design and rollout.
Adequate time is needed for this process of co-design and consultation with people with disabilities, families and professionals. Time is also needed to trial and evaluate the new initiative, testing and adapting first before widespread rollout. We join with CYDA to urge adequate time for genuine co-design and evidence-based evaluation, as part of a longer roll-out time for Thriving Kids.
Not engaging in codesign and consultation risks creating ineffective solutions that do not reflect the actual needs of children, their families and communities. This would result in unnecessary costs to government, missed windows for effective early intervention and loss of trust with the broader community.
Maintain the vision for foundational supports
The 2023 NDIS Review clearly articulated a three-tiered support system for Australians with disability:
- Mainstream services that are inclusive for people with disabilities
- Two types of Foundational Supports, for all people with disabilities:
- General Foundational Supports for all people with disabilities and their families These supports will provide access to information, advice and referral, peer support, individual and family capacity building and self-advocacy.
- Targeted Foundational Supports for people with disabilities who are not on the NDIS but have extra support needs This will include home and community supports, early intervention for young children with developmental concerns, and transition supports to help young people prepare for employment and independent living.
- NDIS supports for people with the highest support needs.
This system must work as a cohesive whole, not as a series of standalone or siloed reforms. In focusing on Thriving Kids, we urge the government not to lose sight of developing the broader Foundational Supports infrastructure. Foundational Supports are envisioned as being greater than the sum of their parts and need to be thought of and designed as interconnected and contingent on each other.
General Foundational Supports are urgently needed and must be progressed in tandem with Thriving Kids. These services – including self advocacy, peer support, and accessible information - are especially important for people with an intellectual disability and their families. Currently, the Information, Linkages and Capacity Building (ILC) program, which funds information provision, capacity building and economic and community participation community projects, has significant limitations which must be overcome in the design of General Foundational Supports. Evaluation of the ILC program found that it is characterised by short-term competitive funding, which has led to fragmentation and patchy national coverage, inconsistency in delivery, lack of outcomes measurement and no long-term investment in effective programs.
We are concerned that the NDIS Review’s recommendations about a comprehensive national General Foundational Supports program will not be adopted and that they will instead be transposed into a ‘refreshed’ ILC. Instead, we believe that a new General Foundational Supports system is crucial to support better outcomes for Australians with disability, and that this must include consistent long-term investment in evidence-based programs with national coverage.
Ensure a smooth transition onto NDIS for children with intellectual disability
In Australia, an estimated 4.5% of children aged 0 to 14 have an intellectual disability. A significant proportion of people with autism have an intellectual disability, with research suggesting that 35% of
autistic people are also diagnosed with intellectual disability and 20–25% with borderline intellectual disability. Global Developmental Delay is a diagnosis made before age 5 for children with delays in at least two developmental domains. Some children who are diagnosed with Global Developmental Delay will go on to be diagnosed with intellectual disability from age 6, when cognitive tests become more reliable.
For these children and their families, it is essential that they have a clear pathway onto the NDIS, particularly from age 9 when Thriving Kids supports will end. People with intellectual disability have a lifelong impairment that is permanent and significant, and will require a range of supports over their lifespan.
It is critical that government works with the disability community to determine which cohorts of children may be at highest risk of losing supports or being left worse off in any way in the transition to Thriving Kids. This process can assess community need to determine what safeguards and alternative arrangements are required to ensure sufficient supports are in place during and after the transition to Thriving Kids.
Conclusion
Inclusion Australia welcomes the opportunity to provide input into development of the Thriving Kids initiative. It is unclear whether this will be the only such opportunity for input by the Disability Representative Organisations and the broader community. As part of the consultation, we ask for clarification about plans for co-design and targeted consultation, and ask that this process is carefully designed, with quality, accessible information at each stage. For people with an intellectual disability to have the opportunity to participate equitably in this process, consultation materials must be made available in Easy Read.
We thank the Committee again for the opportunity to contribute to this consultation and would be pleased to discuss any aspects of this submission further.
Warm regards,
redacted
Maeve Kennedy
Acting Chief Executive Officer Inclusion Australia
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