On paper, Thriving Kids is appealing. But the stakes are enormous, and for families like mine, painfully familiar.
Autistic advocates didn’t hold back this week, taking a square aim at Dr Mike Freelander after a fiery federal inquiry hearing into the Thriving Kids initiative.
The federal MP, paediatrician, and chair of the inquiry was accused of effectively silencing autistic voices.
Yes, he had the unenviable task of keeping a packed schedule on track. But in practice, that meant he repeatedly cut speakers off mid-sentence, and several lived-experience witnesses said it felt like he was giving neurotypical participants far more leeway than autistic ones.
For a hearing meant to centre autistic children and families, the optics and the impact were far from ideal, as reported in Health Services Daily earlier in the week.
Autistic advocate Alexandra Bignell from ASANANZ summed it up bluntly in a LinkedIn post: “Today’s parliamentary hearing for the Thriving Kids Inquiry was one of the most inaccessible, disrespectful, and exclusionary processes I’ve ever participated in.”
She went further, saying the experience “does not reflect safe and inclusive practice,” describing what occurred as a “fundamental misunderstanding of autistic communication”.
Her most confronting observation was also the most important: “If autistic people cannot even participate safely in an inquiry, how will this system ever be co-designed with us?”
In other words, if inclusion collapses at the very first hurdle – listening – what confidence can families possibly have in what comes next?
That question echoed across the room.
Lived-experience advocates told the inquiry there is already a real danger autistic communities will avoid the Thriving Kids program altogether because they don’t trust it and don’t want it.
That’s a flashing red warning light for a reform that hasn’t even begun.
Here’s what we do know.
Thriving Kids aims to identify developmental issues earlier and build additional mainstream and community supports for children aged eight and under with developmental delay or disability and low to moderate support needs.
The government has pledged $2 billion over five years, with rollout scheduled to begin on 1 July 2026.
Delivery is planned through existing touchpoints families already use – GPs, early education, community health, schools, and digital or phone-based supports. New Medicare items may also be introduced for speech pathology, occupational therapy, and psychosocial supports. Children with significant and permanent disabilities will continue to be supported by the NDIS.
On paper, it’s appealing. But the stakes are enormous, and for families like mine, painfully familiar.
My adult son, who has autism, now lives in a supported independent living home thanks to hard-fought NDIS funding that quite literally changed his life.
But it did not come easily. It took three years just to get him into the NDIS with a small package that barely covered minimal supports. It took another six years, and a staggering amount of advocacy, documentation, stress and persistence, to secure the level of funding he genuinely needed. Before he was accepted into the NDIS at age 20, my son had no access to funded support at all.
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When he was diagnosed in 2001, the public system offered years-long waiting lists for speech therapy, occupational therapy and developmental assessments. If you wanted to see a paediatrician, you paid out of pocket. Early intervention existed but came with massive waiting lists and high costs. There was no funding or subsidy beyond a token Centrelink carer’s allowance that didn’t even cover an hour of therapy.
And yet, back then, the importance of early intervention was drilled into parents relentlessly. It was presented as the only hope – but hope didn’t help if you couldn’t afford thousands of dollars in private therapy. We did what we could, knowing all too well it wouldn’t be enough.
Fast-forward 20 years and the world looks different for children diagnosed today. Not easier. Not gentler. But undeniably better. There is at least a system, imperfect, bureaucratic, often difficult – but a system, nonetheless.
Thriving Kids is not the NDIS and doesn’t pretend to be. But it is an opportunity to build a world-leading program that ensures all children, whether their path eventually leads them into the NDIS or whether they simply need targeted early intervention, get the support they need when it matters most.
But this opportunity comes with substantial risks. Many structural elements of the program remain undefined. Exactly what supports families will receive and how they will access them is not yet clear.
The $2 billion allocated may sound generous, but depending on demand, workforce capacity and cost per child, it may not stretch far enough to deliver meaningful, tailored support.
If the model ends up being too generic or too light-touch, children with more complex needs could slip through the cracks entirely.
And if equity isn’t designed in from the start, children in remote communities, migrant families and those facing socioeconomic disadvantage may receive significantly less benefit than others.
These shaky foundations matter. Because once trust is lost, families rarely return.
And still, the potential is there. By leveraging mainstream systems like GPs, child health checks and schools, earlier identification and intervention could become a reality. Access could become simpler. Support could become timelier.
And the NDIS could become more sustainable by not being the first and only port of call for every developmental concern.
Thriving Kids could deliver transformative change. But that depends entirely on whether autistic people, their families and those with lived experience are treated as essential partners in the design – not as afterthoughts or inconveniences.
For Thriving Kids to succeed, autistic people can’t just be invited into the room.
They need to be heard, respected, and treated as equal partners in building the system their children will inherit.
This inquiry hearing showed how quickly that promise can evaporate under pressure. Unless the government shifts from managing the clock to genuinely valuing lived experience, trust will collapse before the first child even enters the program.
Thriving Kids could be a national asset, but only if its foundations are built on genuine inclusion, not convenience.