ADDENDUM TO THE KIDS RESEARCH INSTITUTE AUSTRALIA SUBMISSION TO THE HEALTH STANDING COMMITTEE ON HEALTH, AGED CARE AND DISABILITY
The Opportunity
The new Thriving Kids initiative provides important opportunities to improve the early support pathway for children for whom there are developmental concerns, and their families, in Australia. These include:
- Aligning with International Best Practice: The introduction of a ‘stepped-care model of support’ in which the type, amount, and level of support is matched to each individual child’s strengths and needs, and adjusted over time as needed.
- Increasing equity: The co-design and implementation of a model that is responsive to the needs of marginalised communities, as the basis of an improved system for all.
- Community-Embedded Support: The re-alignment of systems to prioritise keeping children and families as close to their communities as possible, by engaging and bolstering mainstream supports, and engaging foundational and specialist supports if needed.
- Improved Coordination: The connection and coordination of mainstream, foundational, and specialist services and supports across health, education, disability, and community sectors.
- Improved Safety and Outcomes: Embedding measures of acceptability, feasibility, and effectiveness of the initiative from the outset as the basis for ongoing evaluation and improvement.
Recommendations
We recommend that the design and delivery of the Thriving Kids initiative should:
- Be co-designed: The development and design of the Thriving Kids initiative have a focus on equity and access and be codesigned with communities, especially Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander, CALD, rural and remote, and those experiencing poverty and disadvantage. In doing so, the initiative should draw on the expertise of organisations with a demonstrated track record of genuine, respectful, and productive co-production.
- Adopt a principles-based approach: It is important to articulate the principles that will underpin the Thriving Kids initiative from the outset, drawing on those already defined in National strategies, frameworks, and Guidelines for best practice. These principles should include:
- Child and family-centred design and delivery
- Culturally responsive design and delivery
- Evidence-Based practice
- Equitable access
- Coordinated Care
- Employ a stepped-care model: Consistent with international best practice, a stepped-care model will enable:
- The identification of priority ‘steps’ for children with additional needs (e.g., early identification, inclusive early education, inclusive mainstream services).
- The determining of the requirements of supports at each ‘step.’ For example, to be included at a ‘step’ a support must be evidence-based, culturally responsive, and affirming.
- The identification, building, and/or commissioning of services and supports across States and Territories that meet the requirements.
- The linking of services and supports at different ‘steps’ across health, education, disability, and community sectors.
- Focus on functioning: The Thriving Kids initiative should prioritise assessment of children’s functional strengths and support needs – not diagnoses - as the foundation for determining eligibility and access to supports. This will:
- Re-align the system with best practice, which is to focus on children’s functioning in daily life, including learning, participation, and wellbeing.
- Avoid the need for parents to pursue diagnoses in order to access supports.
- Reduce barriers for children and families.
- Introduce a ‘Navigator:’ Responding to the extensive feedback from the community regarding the challenges of ‘navigating’ services and supports, a nationally-consistent navigator model should be adopted. This will enable parents and families to access information, advice, strategies, and connections to services and supports.
- Utilise existing evidence: Australia is fortunate to have a number of National Guideline and Frameworks that set out what ‘best practice’ looks like in the Australian context. These should be the foundation for the design and delivery of the Thriving Kids initiative. For example, the existing Frameworks and Guidelines:
- Set out a principles-based approach to the design and delivery of supports.
- Articulate what accessible, equitable, and affirming support looks like.
- Provide evidence-based recommendations that set out a personalised approach to support planning.
- Can be used to establish the criteria and mechanisms for monitoring the safety and effectiveness of supports provided to children and families.
- Engage Organisations: The shift from the NDIS to Thriving Kids is likely to have a substantial impact on existing community and professional support providers, which could negatively effect workforce capacity, particularly during the transition. These organisations are ideally positioned to support the transition, if engaged, such as by:
- Working with professional peak bodies, societies, and associations to ensure that members are informed about, and can contribute to, the design and delivery of new service delivery models, supports, and services.
- Working with community organisations to build and bolster capacity for place-based initiatives as a central component of the stepped-care model.
- Working with vocational and higher education providers to ensure certificate, diploma, bachelors, and masters degree professional preparation programs are
- optimised to prepare graduates for work with a stepped-care model of support, including interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary practice.
- Working with research organisations in a networked way, whereby cross-institutional programs are established to design, deliver, and evaluate the Thriving Kids initiative and constituent components.
- Embed Evaluation: Consistent with best practice in system design and delivery, it is important to embed robust mechanisms for evaluation. These should:
- Be-codesigned with community, including governance, design, and delivery of the evaluation mechanisms.
- Be child and Family focused, including emphasis on safety, accessibility, accessibility, feasibility, and meaningful outcomes (e.g., quality of life).
- Be coordinated (employing a network of institutions to examine National, State & Territory, and place-based approaches and outcomes).
- Be transparent, in line with best practice in the design, implementation, and reporting of research including access to data.
- Be longitudinal, to ensure the program and its constituent parts can be evaluated and improved over time with sustainable funding.
3 October 2025