NDIS 2024-2025 Reforms

Breaking news: “Thriving Kids” – more than just a new name for Foundational Supports for children?

David Kinnane · 20 August 2025 · Leave a Comment

“Thriving Kids”, announced by Minister Mark Butler on 20 August 2025, is the snappy new name for Foundational Supports for children.

But is it more than that?

We don’t have a lot of details right now. But it sounds different from the original proposal for Targeted Foundational supports (discussed in 2024), and a lot more like what the Grattan Institute recommended (back in June 2025 – see below):

The Federal Government to take leadership of the new national system (to avoid eight different State systems).
Limiting NDIS access for children to only those children with significant and permanent disability (i.e. children who are likely to need lifelong support).
Funded programs, like Inklings, MHiPS and Positive Partnerships for children with mild and moderate developmental delay or autism to be delivered in mainstream settings, like community health centres, supported playgroups, and schools.
Increased scrutiny over consistent pricing and value for money of allied health and other services across disability, health and aged-care sectors.

If this is right, the new system may mean:

the end of the early intervention NDIS pathway and individualised supports for most children who would otherwise qualify for the NDIS under current rules; and
the creation of new (block-funded?) programmed services to be delivered in mainstream settings, like early community childcare settings and schools.

There was also talk of creating a new Medicare bulk-billed item for GPs to check 3-year-olds for developmental issues, and providing access to new Medicare allied health items.

Of course, we’re yet to hear from the States, who will be paying for half of it. (Some States like NSW have been working and consulting on the earlier Foundational Supports proposal.)

This new system is due to start rolling out from 1 July 2026, with major NDIS access changes flagged for sometime in 2027.

We await more details!

But, in the meantime, there is already a lot for us all to work through as we think about choice and control and service delivery models for children with developmental delay or disability and their families.

Targeted Foundational Supports consultations: an “idea salad” with more questions than answers for allied health providers?

Speech from Minister Butler, National Press Club – 20 August 2025

Allied Health Providers: The NDIA Just Told Us the Truth (Again)

David Kinnane · 14 August 2025 · Leave a Comment

What They Said

“The NDIA does not directly fund providers, but allocates funding to NDIS participants and business decisions, including whether to continue offering services through the NDIS, are a matter for individual organisations.”

(NDIA spokesperson, quoted in “NDIS providers evacuate market after pricing review,” by Sarah Ison, The Australian, 10 August 2025)

In plain English: The NDIS pricing decision was not an accident. It was designed to restructure the market. No one is coming to save providers who won’t or can’t adapt.

So, we have a choice.

Low Agency Responses

Complain
Wait for better conditions (they’re not coming)
Accept razor-thin margins or losses
Blame the NDIA when things get worse

High Agency Responses

Ask different questions:

How do we build a business that thrives regardless of – or despite – the NDIA?
How can we turn constraints and gaps into a competitive advantage?
What would we do if failure literally wasn’t an option?
How would someone from a completely different industry solve this challenge?
How would we handle this if no government funding existed at all?
What are participants begging us NOT to change about our services?
What’s the smallest step we could take today that moves us toward sustainability?
If we only had 6 months of funding left, what would we prioritise?
What would we regret not trying if we looked back in 5 years?
If we locked our three smartest colleagues in a room for 2 hours to work on this problem, what would they come up with?

Take small actions now:

Map dependencies – Where are you most vulnerable?
Diversify revenue – Who else needs the value you provide?
Build efficiencies – How can we deliver better outcomes, more quickly?
Create loyalty – How do we make ourselves less generic, more useful, and more sought after?
Add to choice and control – Can we deliver more and better services in different ways to increase participant choice?

Bottom line:

The NDIA’s statement isn’t a threat – it’s another reminder that things have changed. They’ve just told us exactly where we stand.

The truth is hard to take, but we can do it:

Our opportunity: Providers who adapt to reality > providers waiting for rescue.
Our choice: Victim of policy or architect of our own solutions?

Need a 30-minute pep talk to get the creative juices going? Check out this terrific essay by George Mack.

Curious about how to actually apply high-agency principles in your practice or workplace? On 25 August, we’re releasing our Courage Playbook – available only for our Banter Booster Premium subscribers. Sign up here.

‘NDIS Supports’ definition: who’s confused?

David Kinnane · 31 July 2025 · Leave a Comment

On 30 July 2025, the Government published its report on the August 2024 ‘Consultation on Draft Lists of NDIS Supports’.

The report is very late.

The report and its timing may confuse some participants and providers.

Here is a quick recap:

The Government published its draft “in” and “out” lists to define NDIS Supports on 4 August 2024 – almost a year ago.

The consultation period was very short: 4-to-25 August 2024.

Participants, providers, advocates and others found the time to respond to the consultation: the Government received more than 7,000 responses and submissions.

The Government imposed its transitional rules for NDIS Supports on everyone on 3 October 2024 – almost 10 months ago.

Until 30 July 2025:

it was unclear whether the Government had listened to anyone who responded or made submissions;
some participants and providers thought that:
- they had wasted their time responding to the consultation paper; and/or
- the Government had ignored their submissions; and/or
- there was no real consultation about the NDIS support lists – the Government had already ‘made up its mind’ when it published the lists.

As predicted by many people who responded to the consultation, the “in” and “out” lists have been difficult to apply in practice.

The report shows that the Government knew about many of the problems with the lists, including:

the application of black-and-white inclusion and exclusion rules to “grey areas” at the intersection between disability-related supports and mainstream health care and mental health care (e.g., pp 13, 29-32);
the practical effects of excluding particular supports for a person with disability when there are well-known, significant gaps in early childhood, health, education, aged-care and other mainstream supports and systems for people with disabilities (e.g., pp 10, 13, 33-35);
the practical challenges of establishing whether an individual’s specific need in a given case may relate to their disability, healthcare, educational attainment, or employment (e.g., pp 10, 33-34);
the meaning and scope of ‘evidence-based’ therapeutic supports (e.g., pp 17-18); and
confusion about how the rules apply to the funding of various specialist and standard products and equipment, and different assistive technologies, and communication devices and information equipment (e.g., pp 11, 20, 25).

On 16 June 2025, the Government launched another consultation on the definition of NDIS Supports – this time to replace the transitional rules with a “final definition”.

This second consultation closed on 27 July 2025.

We look forward to reading the next consultation report.

Hopefully, this time the Government will give participants, providers and other stakeholders an opportunity to see and comment on the proposed new definition well before the new definition comes into effect.

In deep water: paediatric allied health NDIS providers should read the Grattan Report

David Kinnane · 2 July 2025 · Leave a Comment

The Big Picture:

On 29 June 2025, the influential Grattan Institute published a 108-page report with proposals to save the NDIS (link below).

Many allied health providers were distracted by financial year-end and compliance tasks to comply with the (now live) Pricing Limits for 2025-26.

But the report is well worth a read – particularly for paediatric allied health providers who own or work out of clinics.

Attention-grabbers:

The report authors, led by former NDIA senior policy advisor Dr Sam Bennett, propose several very significant changes:

Abolish the early intervention pathway (i.e. section 25 of the NDIS Act) (pp57, 83).
Abolish individualised funding for all children under 18 who are or would have otherwise been supported through the early intervention pathway (pp31, 57).
Redirect funds to replace the early intervention pathway with “muscular” Foundational Supports (pp56-59):
- general supports: information and education; and
- targeted supports, including “low-to-mid-level allied health supports to improve the long-term capabilities of children” (p13).
Governments to co-commission Foundational Supports:
- with 3-5 year contracts (pp49, 71), including for “evidence-based services” to “encourage providers to offer higher-quality programs” (p57); and
- from “lead providers” that have the capacity and systems to manage a group of sub-contractors (pp50, 73).
Adopt a Key Worker model to help families navigate options (p54).
5-year transition to avoid service gaps and give providers “sufficient time to prepare” but with the transition to start from 1 July 2026 (p60).
All Foundational Supports – and thus all early intervention therapies – for children to be delivered in natural environments – not clinics – including in “supported playgroups, early childhood education settings, health and community hubs, libraries, and family- and community-led organisations” (pp30, 57).
No mandatory registration of allied health providers to provide Foundational Supports. Recognition of AHPRA registration/regulation by a professional body (p75).
Better national sharing of provider information, and better integration of provider registration and worker screening checks (pp75-76).
Retain individualised plan funding for children with lifelong and severe disability (i.e. for children who meet the disability requirements under s 24 of the NDIS Act) (p57).

Reality check:

These are proposals from a think tank – not government policies. But the report is well-researched and written, and is likely to get the attention of policy decision-makers, as well as media and social media critics of the NDIS.

Bottom line:

Participant and disability advocacy groups will have a lot more to say about the report and the implications for access, and for choice and control over allied health early intervention services.

But paediatric allied health providers should also consider the report when reviewing their business strategies and risks for 2025-26 and beyond.

If implemented, the Grattan proposals would:

transform early intervention allied health service-delivery across Australia; and
accelerate the sector-wide shake-out of paediatric allied health service providers.

Go deeper:

Bennett, S., Jessurun, M., and Orban, H. (2025). Saving the NDIS: How to rebalance disability services to get better results. Grattan Institute.

Sector on edge: the NDIA knows it needs better processes to reduce NDIS reform anxiety and to rebuild trust with participants and providers

David Kinnane · 25 June 2025 · Leave a Comment

“Implementation [of reforms] does not stop with how our service delivery staff put that in a plan. Providers also have to know the consequences, know what to do, know what participants will come to them and ask about, and be able to support them” – NDIA staff member*

Big picture:

The NDIS reforms of 3 October 2024 were not well-implemented or communicated to participants or providers. A new report reveals NDIA management knows about some of the things that went wrong internally. But will they learn from their mistakes, and listen to participants and providers?

Report:

On 23 June 2025, the NDIA’s Policy, Evidence and Practice Leadership Division published a report with its “early observations” on the NDIA’s initial implementation of NDIS Act amendments that took effect on 3 October 2024, including:

section 10 and its accompanying transitional rules defining NDIS Supports (containing the “in list” and “out list”); and
section 33 (funding amounts, periods and components).

Context:

The “in and out” lists were finalised on 2 October 2024 and implemented on 3 October 2024 (p 8) after what can be described (charitably) as a very limited consultation period. Many stakeholders were dissatisfied with the consultation timeframes (p14). After the reforms went live, NDIA staff, participant, planner, and provider confusion ensued over interpretation of the lists.

Cases in point:

For example, some participants and providers were confused about:

whether funding for food and transport (both on the “out list”) were permissible in relation to short-term accommodation (p13);
whether the use of tablets (on the “out list”) embedded in assistive communication devices (on the “in list”) were okay (p24);
what, exactly, was meant by the term ‘evidence-based therapeutic support’ (p24); and
whether therapy types that were not on the in or out lists were okay (e.g. for chiropractic therapies) (p25).

What went wrong:

Among other things, the report authors observed that:

the amendments generated participant uncertainty and anxiety (p6);
months of planning proved inadequate, and initial implementation of the changes was more challenging than expected (p26);
NDIA staff weren’t ready or adequately trained to answer some specific stakeholder questions with confidence (pp6-7, 25), including gaps in knowledge and skills needed to apply the changes to “nuanced circumstances” (i.e. beyond generic answers) (pp20, 27). To quote an NDIA staff member: “We had to do our first participant information session on the changes on the afternoon of 3 October and we were still trying to understand the changes ourselves” (p27);
the NDIA had to publish around 50 clarifications (p7) and felt some of their clarifications and corrections were drowned out by social media commentary (p13);
problem resolution was stymied by inadequately coordinated internal communications across the NDIA (p7);
some NDIA staff were unaware when previous guidance and FAQs had been superseded (p 25); and
some plan managers and providers responded by taking a “risk averse” approach to the “out list”, and erred “on the side of caution” (p8), which may not have been anticipated by the NDIA.

Lessons learned?

The report authors make some sensible suggestions for future reforms, mainly focused on improving internal processes. But stakeholders weren’t overlooked, with recommendations that included:

recognising that the pace of change may not be sustainable, given its potential impacts on stakeholders, participants and the disability community and “for ensuring continued collaboration and quality outcomes” (p31);
involving participants and sector stakeholders in the planning process to identify potential issues (p32);
more emphasis on participant communication and engagement before changes take effect (p31);
the importance of prepared resources and clear communication in place before reforms take effect (p31); and
the need to consider “unintended consequences” (secondary effects) of flurries of clarifications from the NDIA post-reforms, e.g. on participant and other stakeholder anxiety levels (p31).

Why this matters now:

Since the October 2024 reforms, stakeholder relationships have been further strained by the 2025-2026 NDIS Pricing Arrangements and Price Limits that take effect on 1 July 2025.
Section 33-empowered changes to funding periods are now being implemented, including 1, 3 and 12 month periods, affecting participants (and providers who must design systems to comply with changes).
The next major round of reforms are upon us, including:
- consultation on the final definition of NDIS Supports (to replace the transitional ‘in’ and ‘out’ list rules) will close on 27 July 2025 and we still don’t have an exposure draft of the proposed law; and
- the imminent establishment of the NDIS Evidence Advisory Committee to examine the evidence-base for different therapies and other supports.

Bottom line:

The NDIA knows it needs to maintain strong relationships with the disability community because they are “essential for the ongoing success of the reform program” (p31). It also knows that providers have to understand the rules before we can build systems to comply with them and to support the participants we serve (p28). Good internal processes and clear communication from the NDIA will play a big part in determining the outcomes of the next tranche of reforms and public confidence in the scheme.