Thriving Kids in Schools: Will it Work?

At its core, Thriving Kids is an ambitious plan by the Federal Government to:

• divert children with mild and moderate autism and developmental delay from the NDIS early intervention pathway; and
• replace NDIS-funded individualised allied health therapies for these children with block-funded programs delivered in ‘natural environments’, like schools.

In Minister Mark Butler’s words, Thriving Kids represents the Federal Government’s vision for a “better system” for children with mild and moderate delay or autism that features a:

•  “robust system of supports to help them thrive”; and
•  “more rigorous evidence base for the supports being funded by taxpayers”.   

Good intentions… 

Bold social policy visions with noble names like Thriving Kids are hard to criticise without sounding like you’re attacking the objectives. (Who doesn’t want kids to thrive?)

We all:

• want a better system for children with autism and developmental delay; and 
• know that publicly funded disability services must be economically sustainable. 

 But policy goals are not outcomes.  

We want high quality services for children 

In their recent Quality Support for Children booklet, the NDIA and NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission reminded us that all providers must ensure services to children with disability or delay:

• represent best practice; 
• focus on positive outcomes for children and their families; and
• improve their quality of life. 

We should hold Thriving Kids to the same standards. 

Two questions arise:

1. Is the Thriving Kids approach backed by evidence that programs will deliver improved outcomes for students with mild and moderate autism or developmental delays? 
2. Is the Government’s vision of bringing federal, state and local government, philanthropic organisations, and community services “under one roof”, “coordinated by schools” likely to work consistently across Australia? 

Question 1: Do block-funded school programs improve student outcomes?

In the Thriving Kids announcement, Minister Butler name-checked programs like Mental Health in Primary Schools (MHiPS) and Positive Partnerships as examples of existing programs that might be scaled up nationally and block-funded to support school-aged children with mild and moderate autism or developmental delay.

Over the last couple of months, we’ve looked at the resources and evidence for MHiPS and Positive Partnerships. You can read our summaries via the links below.

Across these programs, we’re concerned – both by what we found, and by what we didn’t find: 

• Limited independent evidence – We didn’t locate any high quality independent studies with controls for expectation and other biases. (If you know of any, please send them to us.) We don’t know if or how the programs work, or whether they achieve their stated purpose.
• No data on improved student outcomes – The peer-reviewed studies we did find reported third-party perceptions and outcomes, e.g. teacher and parent views. We didn’t locate studies demonstrating improved outcomes for students.  
• No evidence of student feedback – We didn’t find anything substantive about what students think of the programs, or whether the programs have been adjusted to take into account preferences, criticisms, or other feedback. 

Question 2: Real-world implementation issues: predictable problems for programs

In chapter 2 of his still-controversial 1995 book, The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy, economist Thomas Sowell outlined what he saw as a four-stage pattern of social policy failure: 

To date, the Thriving Kids narrative appears to fit Stages 1 and 2 of Sowell’s pattern. 

Are we headed for policy failure?

With funding yet to be agreed with states, it’s far too early to tell whether Thriving Kids will happen as announced and, if so, whether it will fit stages 3 and 4 of Sowell’s pattern. 

But – so we can check in later – let’s make some predictions about foreseeable problems with block-funded national programs for children with mild and moderate autism and developmental delays delivered in schools:

• Accountability issues – No one organisation will bear single responsibility for program outcomes (successes or failures). No single organisation will be accountable to students or families for improved student outcomes. Instead, responsibility will be split, e.g., between federal and state governments,  program-designers/researchers, lead providers, the school leadership team, teachers, subcontractors and the workers actually delivering the programs in schools.  
• Delivery-model limitations – Some children will be missed, including children who are home-schooled, and children who do not or cannot regularly attend school for any reason. 
• Uneven implementation – Block grants are likely to result in regional variation in the availability and quality of services. (This is a valid criticism of the current system, too.)
• Increased complexity in schools – Real-world “on-the-ground” issues will affect program fidelity and delivery, e.g. degree of leadership and teacher support, capacity and training, competing curriculum and extracurricular demands, student socioeconomic, cultural and language differences, existing behavioural and other supports, state education and health and disability policies, and all the many other things that affect school operations, day-to-day. Education, health and disability sector politics are also likely to affect delivery differently in different states. 
• Indirect supports may not improve individual student outcomes – Programs that provide evidence-based strategies and information to teachers and families (like Positive Partnerships) are of course useful. But, many autistic children and children with developmental delay need tailored therapy, delivered directly.    
• Loss of expertise and targeted supports – Some programs, like MHiPS, require educators to spot children who need individualised therapy and to refer them to allied health providers. But this presupposes such services exist.  The independent pricing review report acknowledged that ongoing NDIS reforms and price settings may push some allied health providers and clinicians out of the sector, limiting access to well-trained, properly supervised, and experienced clinicians (see links below for more detail).
• Increased bureaucracy will reduce funding for front-line supports – Block-funded programs delivered in schools may involve a mix of providers and systems, private and public sector organisations, large and small. Funds may flow through multiple layers of bureaucracy, with red tape and risk aversion practices eating into funds intended for students.  
• Checks on competition and innovation – Locking in specific programs at scale may stymie research and innovation. Shirky’s principle says that organisations will try to preserve the problems to which they are the solution. Organisations may resist better solutions that would eliminate the need for ‘their’ program. Providers may be incentivised to create dependencies that ensure continued need for their programs. They may be disincentivised to invest in quality improvements, especially if tenders are awarded to closed panels and/or to the lowest bidder.

Bottom line

“Taxpayers deserve to know that the big investment made in the NDIS is paying for supports that are actually going to make a difference.” – Minister Butler.   

This is equally true for Thriving Kids. 

We hope that Thriving Kids defies Sowell’s pattern and succeeds. But, before we scale up, block-fund and deliver programs through schools nationally, we should – at the very least – demand high-quality evidence that they improve student outcomes and provide value for money for taxpayers, compared with other options. 

Go deeper: 

Unless otherwise stated, all comments attributed to Minister Butler are to his Speech to the National Press Club on 20 August 2025

Thriving Kids Programs Part 2: Mental Health in Primary Schools (MHiPS)

Thriving Kids Programs Part 3: Positive Partnerships

The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy by Thomas Sowell

For more on Thomas Sowell’s work applied to education policy, we recommend this recent article by David Didau 

Quality support for children | NDIS

Allied health providers and pricing controls: independent providers that employ, train, and supervise staff are caught in the middle, and might not survive (and the NDIA knows it)