The federal government has announced it will provide $2bn to fund a program designed to divert hundreds of thousands of children with mild to moderate developmental delays or autism from the NDIS by mid-2027.<\/p>\n
In a speech to the National Press Council on Wednesday, the health minister, Mark Butler, said many children had been placed on the NDIS \u2013 which was designed for permanent disability \u2013 and were being \u201cover-serviced\u201d, putting strain on the scheme\u2019s financial sustainability.<\/p>\n
Analysis in Nine newspapers this week suggested seven out of 10 new participants in the NDIS had autism as their primary diagnosis.<\/p>\n
Butler said it wasn\u2019t parents\u2019 fault as the NDIS was \u201cthe only port in the storm\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey are desperate \u2013 absolutely desperate \u2013 to get their children diagnosed because we\u2019ve made it the only way they can get help \u2026 The NDIS model just doesn\u2019t suit their needs,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The \u201cThriving Kids\u201d program is set to roll out from July next year and will be equally funded by the states, territories and federal government, the minister said.<\/p>\n
Access changes to the NDIS will begin from mid-2027 once the Thriving Kids program has been fully rolled out with work under way to deliver a separate foundational support program for adults with severe and complex mental illness.<\/p>\n
Butler said the current 8% growth target for the NDIS by mid-2026 as agreed to by national cabinet was \u201csimply unsustainable\u201d in the medium and long term, proposing it could be lowered to 5 or 6% in the coming years with agreement by national cabinet.<\/p>\n
More details soon \u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The federal government has announced it will provide $2bn to fund a program designed to divert hundreds of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":81681,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-81680","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81680","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=81680"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81680\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/81681"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81680"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81680"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81680"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}