Updated ,first published
Parents will no longer have to spend thousands of dollars and dozens of hours chasing autism diagnoses for their struggling children to qualify for government disability support under the new Thriving Kids program, which will help children with lower support needs outside the NDIS.
After federal and state governments last week signed a long-awaited health and disability funding deal, Health and Disability Minister Mark Butler on Tuesday unveiled the model for Thriving Kids and revealed it would mainly be run through states and territories.
The Albanese government rebuffed a suggestion from its advisory group that children access therapies through new Medicare plans, and will instead give states money to run the scheme their own way. “We won’t be funding services directly. We’ll be providing that money to states,” Butler said.
“[They] will largely leverage off a lot of programs they already run… It won’t be a traditional Medicare-funded allied health professional visit, that might be bulk billed or might attract a gap fee. This will be quite a different model that state governments, particularly, asked us for.”
Each jurisdiction will devise its own system for supporting tens of thousands of children, aged eight and under, who have autism or developmental delays – many of whom currently have individual packages through the $48 billion NDIS.
State systems will be expected to adhere to the same model, which has four key functions: identifying when children have developmental delays or differences; providing easy access to information about where to get help; supplying programs and tools for parents to build their own skills; and providing targeted support, including therapies and equipment, for children who need it.
The federal government will support Thriving Kids with national components – such as information campaigns, online resources and a call line – but it will otherwise be delivered by states and territories, which will scale up their existing services as well as establish new ones. The Albanese government will finalise individual agreements with each jurisdiction by the end of this month.
Tuesday’s release of the Thriving Kids model comes after Butler’s taskforce took over the design last August because the states and territories were too slow, after first agreeing to help run new services for kids in late 2023. The taskforce, led by Professor Frank Oberklaid, consulted over five months with health, disability and education stakeholders.
Oberklaid said the current system was broken. “Paediatricians were getting requests from inexperienced teachers with the words: please confirm a diagnosis of autism so this child can get services. It totally distorted clinical practice,” he said.
Autism diagnoses have soared in Australia in the last decade – a trend some experts attribute to the NDIS requirements. Sixteen per cent of all Australian six-year-old boys now rely on the scheme.
Under Thriving Kids, families will no longer receive individualised funding or packages, as currently exists under the NDIS. But children will not need any formal diagnosis to access services, which should eliminate lengthy wait times for NDIS support.
“The thing people have complained most about … is the time it takes to get a diagnosis, the need for a formal diagnosis, which can take years to access and cost thousands of dollars, before parents are given any support for their children,” Butler said on Tuesday.
“This will be easy to access. It won’t require a formal diagnosis. And those supports, importantly, will be child and family centred.”
Butler said he expected Thriving Kids to cater to the existing number of children who currently use the NDIS for low or moderate supports – there were 120,444 children in that category on the NDIS last financial year, this masthead has reported, who receive about $1.8 billion in annual payments.
The minister said he also expected additional children who had fallen through the cracks of the NDIS to start using Thriving Kids.
The state and federal governments have so far committed to spending $2 billion each over five years to set up and run the scheme. Butler said the Commonwealth would give $1.6 billion of its portion directly to states and territories, and he anticipated the $4 billion total funding would be sufficient.
How the Thriving Kids model will work
The first layer of the Thriving Kids scheme will involve improving the ways that children’s developmental support needs are identified – whether through community workers, GPs, or early childhood educators and teachers – so that this happens early on.
Next, there should be several access points that enable parents to seek more help. This should involve a national website and phone line, where parents can ask questions and be directed towards local services and support. There could also be physical entry points, such as at family and children’s hubs, or GPs could guide families to further supports.
The third pillar of Thriving Kids will be a program of “Universal Parenting Supports”. This should include online courses, webinars and workshops that help parents understand their children’s needs and how they can help. Peer-support groups for parents should offer another environment where they can build community.
Supported playgroups also fall into this category, where parents can connect while their children develop social skills, and allied health professionals offer guidance. Family programs that help kids with positive play, communication and emotional regulation would be delivered by trained facilitators.
The fourth element of Thriving Kids will be “Targeted Support”, which most closely mirrors the services currently available through the NDIS. This will be available to children who need more occupational therapy, speech pathology, physiotherapy, psychology or other therapies.
Unlike the NDIS model, which gives each family annual funding packages to spend on therapists, these supports will be time-limited and focused on specific goals. A diagnosis won’t be required, but a health professional or Thriving Kids provider will make a light-touch needs assessment.
Some children might just require a single type of support, while those with multidisciplinary needs will be connected to a mix of allied health professionals and support services. For the latter group, one “key worker” will help to co-ordinate their care.
Thriving Kids should also make sure that basic equipment – currently accessed through NDIS funding – is made available, for example through loan pools or equipment libraries. It should offer access to tools like laminated cards and communications boards; sensory cushions, calm-down aids and emotion-regulation charts; velcro shoes, adapted cutlery and non-slip mats; and modified high chairs or simple standing frames.
Next steps will test capacity
But delivery details are still being worked out, and last week’s agreement pushed back the start date: Thriving Kids will start rolling out from October this year and launch fully by January 2028.
Opposition NDIS spokeswoman Anne Ruston lashed the delay and lack of detail.
“It has now been 167 days since Minister Butler first announced Thriving Kids and all he has provided are broad principles and delayed timeframes,” she said.
“Parents were promised certainty and support for their young children. Instead, they’re left wondering what services will be there to support their child, who will provide them and when they’ll actually be available.
“The minister still cannot explain how this program will actually work in practice, how support will be delivered on the ground.”
A group of disability organisations on Tuesday said there were still significant uncertainties about how supports, particularly targeted therapies, would be funded and delivered.
They said all governments must promise a nationally consistent set of standards, and publish clear implementation plans. “Without these commitments, people with disability and families risk facing fragmented systems, inconsistent access and widening service gaps,” they said.
The review said the “targeted supports” should be delivered where children live, learn and play – such as schools, childcare, at home, or in community hubs.
However, it said running Thriving Kids through schools or childcare would need to be carefully designed so that it didn’t comprise their core purpose of delivering education.
The taskforce also anticipated teething pains as the workforce adjusts and services are rolled out. “There may be wait times to access some supports,” their report said.
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Natassia Chrysanthos is Federal Political Correspondent. She has previously reported on immigration, health, social issues and the NDIS from Parliament House in Canberra.Connect via X or email.
