03/02/2026
“… the program would seek to have autistic children catered for more
so by their families at home…” with each state having the jurisdiction to
use funds as they see fit.
The Hon Mark Butler, Health Minister, dropped the Thriving Kids report today. After a LOT of reading - we’re still no clearer as to what this looks like for us, our clients or their families….
Remember life before the NDIS, Butler says as Thriving Kids report released
The commonwealth will begin rolling out $1.4bn of funding for Thriving Kids to states within weeks, with hopes the program to redirect autistic children off the NDIS will see parents take a more active role in care and early intervention.
The commonwealth will begin rolling out $1.4bn of funding for Thriving Kids to states within weeks, with hopes the program to redirect autistic children off the NDIS will see parents take a more active role in care and early intervention.
As the federal government faces down its July 2026 deadline of reducing the growth of the $50bn-a-year NDIS to an annual 8 per cent, Health Minister Mark Butler on Tuesday released the hotly anticipated Thriving Kids Advisory Group report.
Mr Butler confirmed jurisdictions would have the funding to pump into their education systems in whatever way they saw fit, and that Thriving Kids would be designed on a state-by-state level.
However, Mr Butler left the door open to federal initiatives as part of the Thriving Kids program, such as the reintroduction of the three-year-old healthy kids check scrapped by Tony Abbott
Mr Butler said the program would seek to have autistic children catered for more so by their own families at home, rebuffing apprehension that the government was trying to reduce reliance on the NDIS by having parents take on extra responsibility in the care of children with developmental delay,
“I just want to be clear that there was a life before the NDIS,” he said in Canberra.
“The NDIS has only been in place for a little over a decade, and before that time, all of the services that we’re really talking about through the Thriving Kids program did exist at a state level … It’s not rocket science.”
He confirmed the decision to hand states the bulk of the commonwealth’s $2bn Thriving Kids’ investment, rather than the federal government directly funding programs, was made after negotiation with state counterparts.
“We won’t be funding services directly. We’ll be providing that money to states,” he declared.
“Overarching principles (in the Thriving Kids report) will now be the subject of negotiation with each state and territory government so that we can conclude bilateral agreements with them to see funds flow to them by the 20th of February. We’re aiming to wrap up all of those bilateral schedules or bilateral agreements with every state and territory government before South Australia goes into caretaker later in February.”
The Thriving Kids advisory report, handed to government in December, focuses on six key principles behind the program including to identify children with developmental delay as early as possible and connect them with supports, matched to their level of need.
In announcing the release of the report at a press conference on Tuesday morning, Mr Butler said Thriving Kids would help get the “NDIS back on track”.
Other principles include offering supports that are child and family centred, informed by evidence and focused on outcomes, and ensuring that supports are delivered in everyday settings.
Mr Butler said the number of young children with these needs that had been on the NDIS was “alarming” and required action.
“I also spoke of the need to address what I viewed as an alarming number of young children who had been enrolled in the NDIS, a number that had risen to as many as one in six young boys, junior primary age boys,” Mr Butler said.
“In some parts of the country, as far as one in four junior primary aged boys had been enrolled on to the NDIS, a scheme that was obviously designed for significant and permanent, usually lifelong, disability.
“Most of those young children were enrolled for developmental delay or autism.”
The advisory group report stresses that access to Thriving Kids by this cohort of children “does not require a diagnosis”.
Instead the Advisory Group recommended “a functional assessment of support needs to match the child with the most appropriate supports. In addition to this support needs assessment, some identification or diagnostic tools may be used by relevant workers to help better understand needs of the child”.
This followed the advisory group finding the market for supporting children was limited, and that there was not an existing workforce for new roles or a pool of specialised support worker positions to be pursued as part of delivering Thriving Kids.
The full Thriving Kids program will be implemented by January 2028, at which point NDIS eligibility will change to ensure children with mild to moderate autism stop accessing the scheme going forwards.
