What is Thriving Kids?
Thriving Kids is a new federal government program being rolled out Australia-wide in partnership with the state and territory governments. Thriving Kids will replace existing NDIS supports for children under 9, who are assessed as having mild-moderate developmental delays or autism. The NSW government is the first to announce how they intend to structure and deliver this new model, which is set to be managed by the Department of Communities and Justice (DCJ). The DCJ has decided that their model for Thriving Kids will remove private clinicians and allied health providers from this program - meaning thousands of kids will quietly lose access to therapists they currently see and rely on.
Allied NDIS providers, clinicians and therapists are sounding the alarm on the NSW model. The problems are clear: kids will lose their therapists and go backwards, the lack of NGO workforce will blow out waitlists, regional areas - which NGOs rarely serve - may lose access to support altogether. This site exists so providers can put real data behind these warnings. Each entry on the map is a real caseload. Each “at-risk” number is a real estimate from the people delivering care today.
The data we're collecting:
- Your contact details (private)
- Number of kids under 9 in your caseload
- How many you expect will be classified mild–moderate
- Where you practice and how far you travel
- Whether you're private, NGO or government
- What you fear may happen
Privacy:
Your name, email, phone and organisation are never shown publicly. On the map, your location is jittered by a few hundred metres so individual practices can't be pinpointed. Comments are shown without any identifying information.
Who runs this website:
This website was created by Professionals Australia - the union representing self-employed and small practice NDIS professionals. Our campaign is led by frontline allied health union members - including OTs, speech pathologists, physiotherapists, behaviour support practitioners, dieticians, and more. Our members believe in a safe, fair and forever NDIS - and will fight to protect it. This website is more than dots on a map. This data represents the thousands of children receiving care from thousands of allied health professionals who know them by name.