Thriving Kids and Foundational Supports: What Autism Families Need to Know

Thriving Kids and Foundational Supports: What Autism Families Need to Know

This is the biggest change to autism support in Australia since the NDIS began, and most families still haven’t been told what it is.

Thriving Kids is a new Australian Government initiative for children aged 8 and under with developmental delay or autism with low to moderate support needs. It sits outside the NDIS, as the first phase of a new system called foundational supports. The first state-based services became available from 1 October 2026, with full rollout expected by 1 January 2028.

The part that matters most to families: children aged 8 or under who are currently NDIS participants, with autism or developmental delay and low to moderate support needs, will be assessed before 1 January 2028 and moved to Thriving Kids if that is considered appropriate.

Given that autism is the primary disability for 338,099 NDIS participants — 44% of all participants — and that a large share of those are young children, this reform affects an enormous number of Australian families.

This guide sets out what is known, what isn’t, and what to do now. It is general information, not advice about your own circumstances, and the detail is moving — confirm current information at ndis.gov.au or on 1800 800 110.

Why this is happening

Worth understanding, because it explains the shape of the reform.

The NDIS was designed for people with permanent and significant disability. It became, in practice, the main source of therapy for a very large number of Australian children with developmental concerns — because it was the only properly funded door available. Autism became the largest primary disability category in the scheme, and the great majority of those participants are children.

That produced two problems the reform is intended to address.

Cost growth. The scheme’s growth has been driven substantially by children, and governments concluded it was not sustainable on its current trajectory.

A perverse incentive. Because NDIS access generally required a diagnosis, families were pushed toward seeking one to obtain support. That medicalised ordinary developmental variation, lengthened diagnostic waiting lists, and meant children waited for a label before getting help.

Foundational supports are intended to provide a tier of support that does not require a diagnosis and sits between mainstream services and the NDIS. Under the National Agreement on Foundational Supports, which commenced on 2 February 2026 and runs to 2031, the Commonwealth and the states and territories jointly fund it.

Whether it works depends almost entirely on whether the new system is funded and staffed adequately before children are moved into it. That is the open question, and it is a fair one to hold.

What Thriving Kids provides

Based on what has been published:

Information and community activities about child development, developmental delays and differences, for families and communities.

Routine child development and health checks, intended to identify concerns earlier.

Advice on child development and where to get help.

Parenting supports — online courses, peer support groups and supported playgroups.

Targeted supports — including speech pathology, occupational therapy and psychology.

Two features are genuinely positive and worth naming.

No diagnosis required. This removes the diagnostic gatekeeping that has distorted the system, and means a family can get help while assessment is still pending — or without pursuing assessment at all.

Earlier intervention. The evidence favours early support, and a system that doesn’t require a 12-to-24-month diagnostic wait can act sooner.

What is much less clear is the intensity of support available. NDIS early childhood plans have funded substantial individual therapy for some children. Whether Thriving Kids will fund comparable intensity, or something closer to group programs and parent coaching, has not been spelled out. That is the central uncertainty, and anyone telling you confidently either way is guessing.

The timeline

Availability varies by state and territory, because delivery is being arranged through bilateral agreements. Bilateral Thriving Kids agreements have been signed with most jurisdictions.

The practical consequence: what is actually available to you right now depends on which state you live in, and the answer changes month to month during rollout. Your state disability or health department, and your early childhood partner, are the places to ask.

What foundational supports are, beyond Thriving Kids

Thriving Kids is the first phase of something larger, and understanding the whole structure helps make sense of where it is heading.

Under the National Agreement on Foundational Supports, which commenced on 2 February 2026 and runs to 2031, the Commonwealth and the states and territories jointly fund disability supports outside the NDIS. The agreement covers two tiers:

General supports — information, advice, peer support and services available to people with disability under 65, to children with additional developmental needs, and to their families, carers and kin. These are services you access rather than individually funded packages. No diagnosis, no plan, no access request.

Targeted supports — a middle tier sitting between mainstream services and specialist NDIS supports, for people who need more than mainstream services provide and who do not qualify for the NDIS.

Funding for national priority cohorts is being agreed through bilateral agreements with each state and territory, which is why availability differs by jurisdiction and why timelines shift.

Why this structure matters for autism specifically: autism is the largest primary disability group in the NDIS, and a large share of those participants are children with low to moderate support needs. The foundational supports tier is, in substantial part, being built for them. If it works, it provides faster, diagnosis-free, earlier support to a very large number of families. If it is under-funded, it becomes a cheaper destination for people moved out of a more expensive scheme.

Which of those happens is genuinely undetermined at the time of writing, and it will be determined jurisdiction by jurisdiction. The practical consequence for families is that what is available to you depends on your state, and the only reliable way to know is to ask locally — your state health or disability department, your early childhood partner, and other families in your area.

Who stays in the NDIS

This is the question families most want answered.

Children with significant permanent disability, including high support needs, remain eligible for the NDIS. Thriving Kids is for low to moderate support needs.

The difficulty is that “low to moderate” has not been precisely defined publicly, and it is the phrase that will determine which system a child sits in. The government has not published the assessment process or the threshold.

That uncertainty is uncomfortable, and it has a practical implication: if you believe your child’s support needs are higher than low to moderate, the time to document that is now, before an assessment happens, rather than afterwards through a review.

What documentation helps:

Current functional assessments, particularly from an occupational therapist and speech pathologist, describing what your child can and cannot do, with specifics and frequencies.

Evidence of co-occurring conditions — intellectual disability, epilepsy, significant communication impairment, feeding difficulties, sleep disorders, mental health conditions. These frequently carry more functional weight than autism alone.

Evidence of the support actually being provided, including unpaid support. A child who appears to be coping because a parent has restructured their working life around them is not a child with low support needs.

A record of incidents and consequences — what happens without support, not just what support is in place.

Your own account of a realistic day and week, written down.

Our autism and the NDIS guide covers how functional evidence works in detail, and our guide to what an occupational therapist does covers getting an assessment that reflects a realistic day rather than a good one.

What to do now

Don’t disengage. Nothing has been taken away. Existing plans continue until reassessed, and the transition runs to 2028.

Find out what is available in your state. Thriving Kids services are being rolled out jurisdiction by jurisdiction. Some supports may be useful to you now, in addition to NDIS supports.

Keep your functional evidence current. This is the single most useful thing you can do. An assessment from three years ago describing a four-year-old will not help when your seven-year-old is assessed.

Use the therapy you have. Where capacity building funding exists now, using it produces both benefit and evidence. Unspent funding is read as funding that wasn’t needed.

Document outcomes. What has the speech pathology achieved? What does the occupational therapy maintain? This evidence defends funding in either system.

Watch for notifications. The NDIA has said it will notify participants before changes affecting them take effect. Keep your contact details current in the myplace portal.

Know your review rights. If a decision moves your child out of the NDIS and you believe that is wrong, internal review must be requested within three months, and an application to the Administrative Review Tribunal within 28 days of that decision. Both are free, and the NDIS Appeals program provides free advocates. Our guide on what to do when the answer is no covers the process.

Connect with other families. Autism peer and parent networks are where the practical state-by-state information circulates fastest, generally well ahead of official communications.

Questions worth asking right now

Concrete things to ask, and who to ask them of, because vague worry is less useful than a specific answer.

Ask your early childhood partner or local area coordinator: What Thriving Kids services are available in my state today? Is my child’s current plan affected, and when is their next scheduled reassessment?

Ask your therapists: Is my child’s functional assessment current? If not, when can we update it? What would you write about their support needs if asked today?

Ask your paediatrician or diagnosing clinician: Does the diagnostic report state a DSM-5 level? If Level 2 or 3 is clinically appropriate and the report doesn’t say so, can that be added? This matters because autism at Level 2 or 3 sits on NDIS List A, and the level is what the access criteria turn on. Our autism and the NDIS guide covers why.

Ask the NDIA, on 1800 800 110: Is my child’s plan affected by the Thriving Kids transition, and if so when will we be contacted?

Ask other parents in your state, through autism parent networks. State-level practical information circulates there well before official communication arrives.

Ask yourself one question honestly: if this funding reduced, what would stop? That answer is the basis of any case you later need to make, and it is easier to write down now than under pressure.

What not to do: don’t withdraw from current therapy on the assumption it will end, don’t pay for a diagnosis purely to protect NDIS access without clinical advice, and don’t accept an informal statement from anyone — including a provider — about what your child will or won’t be eligible for. That is a delegate’s decision, made against published criteria.

The gap nobody has solved

A problem worth naming because it affects real families right now.

Thriving Kids covers children aged 8 and under. The NDIS covers children with significant permanent disability. That leaves a group in between: autistic children and young people over 8 whose support needs are real but not significant enough for the NDIS.

For them, there is currently no dedicated tier. Broader foundational supports — the general and targeted supports described in the National Agreement — are intended to fill this eventually, but Thriving Kids is the first phase and the rest is still being built.

If your child is 9 or 14 and sits in that gap, the honest answer is that the system has not yet caught up. What exists in the meantime:

School-based supports, including adjustments under disability standards for education, and state education department support.

Medicare-subsidised allied health through a GP chronic disease management plan or mental health treatment plan.

Community health services, which offer allied health at low or no cost in most states, usually with waiting lists.

Headspace and state child and adolescent mental health services, where mental health is the primary concern.

State disability services, which retained equipment, respite and information programs after the NDIS transition and are widely assumed not to exist.

Autism-specific peer and advocacy organisations, which run programs and can point to what exists locally.

It is also worth testing the NDIS assumption rather than accepting it. Families are frequently told informally that their child “won’t qualify,” and that is a judgement an NDIA delegate makes, not a provider or a school. If functional impact is substantial and evidenced, applying is reasonable.

For older autistic people and adults

A short note, because this reform is specifically about young children and it has created an impression that autism support generally is being withdrawn.

It isn’t. Adults with autism who meet the access criteria remain eligible for the NDIS, and nothing in the Thriving Kids reform changes adult access. Autism at Level 2 or 3 remains on List A.

The relevant pressures on adult autistic participants are different ones: the reduction of up to 50% in social, civic and community participation budget allocations from 1 October 2026, and around 10% in capacity building daily activities. For autistic adults, community participation funding is frequently the difference between a connected life and an isolated one, so this is worth taking seriously and documenting against. Our guide to social and community participation funding covers it.

There is also a much older problem that the reform does not address: adults are dramatically under-identified. ABS data puts autism prevalence at 3.1% among Australians under 25 and 0.3% among those 25 and over. Autism does not resolve at 25. Our guide for autistic adults covers late diagnosis.

What good early support looks like

Since Thriving Kids is explicitly about earlier support, it is worth saying what the evidence favours — because families will be offered things, and some are better supported than others.

Naturalistic and child-led. Approaches that follow the child’s attention and interests and build on them, rather than running a programme of adult-directed drills. Evidence has moved substantially in this direction.

Family-centred. Coaching parents and carers so support happens in ordinary daily life, not only in a clinic for an hour a week. This is also more sustainable and more equitable, since it does not depend on how many appointments a family can get to.

Communication first. Where a child has limited speech, getting them a reliable means of communication — including AAC — is among the highest-value things available. AAC does not suppress speech; the evidence generally finds the opposite or no effect. Our communication guide covers it.

Environment and accommodation, not only skill-building. Changing the sensory and social environment is frequently cheaper and more effective than teaching a child to tolerate an environment that could have been changed.

Goals the family and child actually hold. Support aimed at things that matter to them, not at reducing autistic traits for their own sake.

What to be cautious about:

Programmes aimed at making a child appear non-autistic. Reduced stimming, forced eye contact, suppressed enthusiasm. Autistic adults who went through these frequently describe them negatively in retrospect, and masking is associated with poorer mental health outcomes.

Intensive hour-count claims. Very high weekly hour targets are sometimes presented as necessary. The evidence for specific intensities is weaker than the marketing suggests, and the cost to a family’s ordinary life is real.

Anything presented as recovery or cure. There isn’t one, and claims of it should be discussed with a doctor before money changes hands.

How to read what you are told about this

A practical note, because the information environment around this reform is poor.

Provider blogs are frequently out of date or wrong. Much of what is published about Thriving Kids was written from early announcements and has not been updated.

“Your child will lose their NDIS funding” is not a statement anyone can currently make accurately, because the assessment threshold has not been published. Anyone saying it with confidence — including to sell you a service — is overstating what is known.

Equally, “nothing will change” is not accurate either. A transition process has been announced with a 1 January 2028 deadline.

Primary sources are better than summaries. ndis.gov.au, your state health or disability department, and the Department of Health and Disability’s own material are more reliable than secondary commentary, including ours.

Dates and detail move. This reform has already been through several iterations. Anything you read, including this page, should be checked against current official information before you act on it.

Where to next

Autism and the NDIS covers access in detail, including the List A distinction between Levels 1, 2 and 3. Understanding autism covers the diagnosis and what the levels mean. Occupational therapy and autism and speech pathology and autistic communication cover the two therapies most relevant to early support.

We’re a registered NDIS provider supporting autistic adults across NSW, so Thriving Kids is not a programme we deliver — we have written this because families keep asking and the available information is poor. If you want to talk about adult supported living, call 1300 271 824.