The Impetus Behind “Thriving Kids”

The National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) was designed as a support program for people with disabilities, with autistic individuals being one of its major beneficiary groups. According to statistics, approximately 290,900 Australians are autistic, meaning roughly 1 in every 90 people falls on the autism spectrum. Among children and adolescents under the age of 25, the prevalence of autism is significantly higher than in the adult population.

Since its implementation, many parents have become heavily reliant on the funding and assistance provided by the NDIS. For some families, it represents their only source of meaningful support. In August last year, the government proposed the Thriving Kids program, though details remained vague for an extended period. After a long period of stagnation, a full policy framework was finally released this year. However, the more pressing question is this: to what extent have Australian parents come to treat disability-related programs for children as a central pillar of support—and to what extent has the government itself encouraged this dependency?

The Background of NDIS and Thriving Kids

The NDIS was originally designed to support individuals with long-term, severe, and permanent disabilities. However, during implementation, its scope expanded rapidly. A large number of autistic children and children with developmental delays entered the scheme, causing participation numbers and costs to far exceed initial projections and placing significant financial strain on the government.

In response, and in an effort to return the system to its original focus on significant and permanent needs while addressing fiscal sustainability, the Australian government announced a new support model—Thriving Kids—in August 2025. This program forms part of the broader “Foundational Supports” framework and is designed for children aged eight and under with low to moderate support needs, including developmental delay or autism.

Thriving Kids emphasizes early identification, information linkage, parent guidance, and timely professional intervention, without requiring a formal disability diagnosis or long-term individualized plans. The federal and state governments jointly committed approximately $4 billion to the initiative. The program is scheduled to begin rollout in October 2026, with full implementation by January 2028. Following this, eligibility criteria under the NDIS Act will be progressively revised so that children with low to moderate needs are redirected to Thriving Kids, while children with severe and significant functional impairments remain supported under the NDIS.

Unlike the NDIS’s annual individualized funding packages, Thriving Kids prioritizes community-based early intervention, delivered through schools, early childhood centres, and local health services. The intent is to provide families with earlier, more practical support, reduce reliance on complex diagnostic processes, and ease long-term financial pressure on the NDIS. The program was designed by the Department of Health with an expert advisory group chaired by pediatrician Frank Oberklaid, alongside consultations with disability advocacy groups and family representatives.

It is important to note that Thriving Kids was not directly completed under Bill Shorten’s leadership. While Shorten was a central architect of the NDIS and promoted the concept of “foundational supports,” he announced his departure from federal politics in September 2024 and stepped down in February 2025 to become Vice-Chancellor of the University of Canberra. The concrete design, naming, and implementation of Thriving Kids were formally announced and advanced in 2025 by his successor, Health Minister Mark Butler.

Despite its intentions, the foundation of Thriving Kids is not entirely sustainable. Limited resources, broad coverage, and reliance on intergovernmental and local coordination place long-term strain on the system. This indirectly encourages some parents to offload responsibilities that would otherwise fall within ordinary parenting onto formal support structures, fostering dependency on Thriving Kids or similar subsidies.

The Pathologies of Parental Dependence

A persistent belief in society holds that as long as parents secure the “best possible support,” autistic children will naturally lead happy lives. This assumption is fundamentally flawed.

Recent data show that children aged 5–7 account for approximately 11–12% of participants in relevant programs, with a high proportion diagnosed with autism. This figure far exceeds historical trends, driving NDIS costs upward to unsustainable levels. Some government officials have bluntly acknowledged that many children were included simply because parents believed this was the only way to obtain support. This implies that not all approved cases genuinely require intensive, long-term resources; rather, parental anxiety combined with institutional incentives has driven a rush to secure whatever assistance is available.

Why are parents so eager to be “first in line”? The answer lies in the chronic delays within the public education and healthcare systems. Comprehensive assessments through public child development services typically take 6 to 24 months, and in some cases over three years. Even after GP referral and initial contact within six weeks, full assessments and meaningful intervention involve long waiting lists. In this context, the NDIS becomes the only system capable of delivering immediate, tangible assistance—speech therapy, occupational therapy, assistive devices, and sensory regulation tools. Over time, parents internalize the belief that failure to enter the system means falling behind entirely, leading to growing reliance on subsidies and gradual withdrawal from active parenting responsibility.

This is where the problems begin.

In extreme cases, parents come to treat the NDIS as an all-encompassing caregiver, outsourcing the roles of therapist, educator, and support system. Understandable justifications are often cited—caregiver exhaustion, lack of family support, or absence of non-institutional resources—resulting in a mentality of “since services are involved, I no longer need to intervene as much.” The outcome is predictable: children struggle socially, behavioural issues escalate, and teachers and peers bear the consequences. Parents then attribute these outcomes solely to “autism itself,” rather than reflecting on the effects of excessive outsourcing and responsibility transfer. Over time, children become institutionally labelled without acquiring real-world adaptive skills.

When children grow up embedded in highly institutionalized service pipelines—continuous assessments, therapies, reports, and reassessments—they learn not how to navigate social situations or self-adjust, but how to wait for instructions and passively respond to professionals. This environment steadily erodes autonomy and problem-solving capacity, particularly for high-functioning autistic individuals. These children often have genuine potential to learn social rules and adapt behaviour, yet are conditioned to function only in therapy rooms, becoming helpless once professional scaffolding is removed. Ultimately, they internalize a dangerous message: “I cannot live without experts.”

Within this framework, every emotional outburst, refusal, or mistake is easily interpreted as further evidence that “more intervention is needed.” Normal developmental behaviours that could have been guided and corrected are prematurely pathologized. This deepens parental anxiety and leads children to internalize the belief that they themselves are fundamentally defective, eroding self-esteem and self-efficacy. Some children even develop dependency patterns: when discomfort or frustration arises, they expect external agents to “fix the problem,” weakening self-regulation and accountability while intensifying parent–child conflict.

Another direct consequence of excessive service intervention is the hollowing out of the parental role. Daily routines, emotional guidance, and boundary-setting—core elements of parenting—are increasingly delegated to therapists, social workers, or support staff. Over time, parents’ understanding of their children becomes fragmented, reduced to diagnostic labels and professional jargon, while intuitive knowledge built through daily interaction is lost. When services are interrupted, reduced, or transitioned, these families become more fragile and conflict-prone, unsure whether they even know how to parent anymore.

More troubling still, overreliance on services leads to the “gentle abandonment” of high-functioning autistic children. As children become more withdrawn, some parents choose accommodation over guidance—avoiding challenges, discouraging risk-taking, and prioritizing surface-level emotional calm. As a result, children’s social worlds shrink, and remaining developmental potential in socialization, adaptability, and self-management is slowly stripped away. Support transforms from a tool into a substitute; from a bridge into a protective shield that blocks growth. The most devastating consequences often emerge only in adulthood, when institutional support fades and individuals find themselves unable to cope with unstructured reality—not due to lack of ability, but because they were never allowed to practice independence. The cycle then repeats in the next generation.

Compounding this problem is the reality that many children receiving services may simply be developing at a slower pace, rather than having long-term, severe impairments. In a system heavily dependent on diagnoses and subsidies, developmental variation becomes over-medicalized. Temporary delays are treated as permanent deficits, diverting substantial resources toward children who might otherwise catch up naturally. Meanwhile, individuals with severe autism or multiple disabilities—those who truly require intensive, lifelong support—are pushed aside, delayed, or overlooked in resource competition. When limited public funds are used to soothe anxiety and patch systemic gaps rather than meet actual need, the entire support system loses fairness and strays from its original purpose.

Support Without Indulgence

An effective support system should strengthen families, not replace them. Government services must function as tools, not long-term substitutes. The core objective should not be the number of therapy hours delivered, but a clear delineation of which supports are temporary and which responsibilities must ultimately return to families and children.

First, support must prioritize parent capacity-building, not one-way resource delivery. Rather than indiscriminately outsourcing services, funding should focus on parent training, behavioural guidance, and in-context coaching. Community-based parent–child workshops can teach positive behaviour management strategies and simulate social scenarios where parents observe and guide in real time. When parents acquire these skills, children’s progress in social interaction, emotional regulation, and self-management becomes more stable and transferable to school and community settings. Success metrics should shift from service completion to parental independence.

Second, systems must include clear exit mechanisms and staged goals. All support plans should have defined timelines and transition points, with regular evaluations of readiness for reduced services and increased autonomy. A high-functioning autistic child, for example, may achieve sufficient self-regulation and basic social interaction after six months of parent-led guidance and light intervention, at which point professional involvement should be gradually reduced. Systems without exit strategies merely manufacture lifelong dependency.

Third, policy must clearly differentiate responses to developmental delay versus long-term disability. Support for the former should be light, short-term, and centred on families and schools; the latter requires stable, long-term resourcing. Accurate triage ensures that high-need groups receive priority while preventing low-need children from becoming service-dependent through over-intervention. Evidence consistently shows that misallocation of resources undermines equity and harms those most in need.

Finally, systems must reaffirm an uncomfortable but essential truth: support is not a replacement for parenting. No policy can substitute for parental presence. A healthy support ecosystem expects parents to re-engage, not retreat. Support should act as a bridge, not a shield—enabling children to develop independence, tolerate frustration, and explore the world.

Parental dependence, excessive service intervention, and resource misallocation are not merely side effects of one policy, but symptoms of a broader societal immaturity in understanding responsibility, care, and public resources. If support systems provide subsidies and substitution without demanding parental accountability, children’s autonomy will erode and high-need populations will be neglected. Policymakers must recognize that the purpose of support is empowerment, not replacement. Families, communities, and public systems must complement—rather than substitute—one another. Without this balance, even the most carefully designed programs such as Thriving Kids or the NDIS will only fill short-term gaps, failing to cultivate independence or long-term wellbeing for autistic individuals.