What should I do if my child has to undergo an Eligibility Reassessment?

A parents guide to prepare and advocate for your child.

Back in March, I published an article titled “Will kids be kicked off the NDIS due to the Independent Review?”

I had just attended a Q&A forum facilitated through the Child and Family Disability Alliance and Association for Children with a Disability. The forum was hosted by disability advocate Elly Desmarchelier and we had 90 minutes of questions from parents and families put to Professor Bruce Bonyhady, a key original architect of the NDIS and Co-Chair of the NDIS Review.

The question I put to Bruce as the parent of an autistic child who is currently an NDIS participant was and has been somewhat of the elephant in the room for so many of us….

‘Will all children who are currently participants remain in the NDIS?’

His response I have paraphrased below…

If you are an NDIS participant your eligibility can be reassessed at any time. If you are a child who enters the NDIS via ECEI there is always the prospect that you will not meet the permanent disability requirements when your child turns nine. 

But I want to make a much broader set of observations and that is that you cannot fix the problems inside the NDIS unless you fix the problems outside the NDIS. And we know the scheme has become an ‘oasis the desert’ - the only support that families can access… and the only supports that children with developmental delay can access. And that was not the intention of the NDIS. Nor was it the intention that all children with a disability access the NDIS.

A key part of the review is this system of foundational supports that will ensure there is a continuous system of graduated supports for children to meet their support needs. 

The question of whether you get an individualised package (NDIS) or you don’t becomes much less important - what is really important is that all children receive support based on their needs and that their needs are picked up as early as possible and that they are then supported where they live, learn and play.

That is the vision we have for kids on this scheme.

Today, parents fight to get their kids on the scheme because it’s the only supports available, and then they fight to keep their kids in the scheme again because it’s the only support available. 

“If there is only one source of that support, then there has to be gravitational pull all of its own,” said Jim Mullan, the CEO of Amaze, a leading autism organisation, based in Victoria.

Fast forward 9 months and we find ourselves in a very different NDIS world already.

The most major legislative reform has been (rushed in many an opinion) through parliament, and a second Bill is now being drafted with a major focus on compliance and penalty actions against NDIS providers doing the wrong thing.

Much of the focus of the Independent Review was scheme sustainability. There were two parts to the Review:

Part 1 examine the design, operations and sustainability of the NDIS covering issues outlined in the full-Scheme bilateral agreements between the Commonwealth and jurisdictions.

Part 2 examine ways to build a more responsive, supportive and sustainable market and workforce.

In simple terms, Part 1 was all about looking at how the NDIS was set up and how it currently runs, and what needs to happen to keep it sustainable. And part of the sustainability piece is the ongoing tussle between the Commonwealth Government and the States and Territories and who should fund what.

We know that the target for financial sustainability for the scheme was set back in April through the NDIS Financial Sustainability Framework agreed by National Cabinet at an annual growth target in the total costs of the Scheme of 8 per cent by 1 July 2026. Recent reports indicated that expenditure growth was around 23%