NDIS Early Intervention for School-Age Children: What Thriving Kids Changes

The Thriving Kids program is the federal government's planned alternative pathway for children under nine with developmental delays or autism who currently access supports through the NDIS. Its July 2026 rollout is generating significant anxiety among families — and for good reason.

Here is what is actually changing, how it intersects with school-based disability supports, and what families with young children should be doing now to protect continuity of support.

What Thriving Kids Is

Thriving Kids is being designed as a separate early childhood support pathway, sitting outside the main NDIS, for children aged under nine who have autism or a developmental delay that does not yet meet the threshold for full NDIS access.

The proposal is that children who would previously have been assessed for NDIS early childhood supports (under the Early Childhood Approach) will instead access Thriving Kids. The program is intended to connect families with the right supports faster, without requiring a formal NDIS eligibility determination that can take months.

The rationale is about early intervention efficiency: the evidence is clear that supports provided early — before a child's foundational developmental window closes — produce significantly better long-term outcomes. The NDIS Early Childhood Approach already operates on this principle. Thriving Kids is meant to extend that logic by creating a more accessible initial entry point.

Why Families Are Worried

A survey cited by Children and Young People with Disability Australia (CYDA) found that 79% of parents expressed severe concern that the Thriving Kids rollout is being rushed, with significant fear of a service gap during the transition.

The core fear is continuity. Families whose children currently access NDIS early childhood supports are concerned that:

• Their child will be moved to Thriving Kids without adequate review of whether the program meets their specific needs
• The transition process will involve a gap in funded supports, particularly for allied health therapies (speech pathology, occupational therapy, behaviour support) that are currently delivered under NDIS plans
• Thriving Kids providers may not have the same specialist capacity as current NDIS-registered providers
• Children close to turning nine at the time of rollout may be caught between the two systems in ways that are administratively confusing

These concerns are not irrational. The NDIS has a significant history of support gaps during transition periods, and the Thriving Kids rollout is being implemented against a backdrop of ongoing NDIS structural reform that is already creating uncertainty for many families.

What This Means for School-Age Children

The school intersection is important here. When a child enters school — typically at age five — they are crossing between two systems: the NDIS (which funds therapeutic and daily living supports) and the state school system (which is responsible for educational adjustments).

The NDIS-education boundary means the school must provide:

• Teaching and curriculum modifications
• Learning support and teacher aide time that is educational in nature
• Adjustments to the school environment to enable curriculum access

The NDIS must provide:

• Therapy (speech, OT, behaviour support) where the purpose relates to the child's daily life functioning, not exclusively to educational attainment
• Communication aids and assistive technology for daily use
• Supports that extend beyond school hours

Thriving Kids, if it functions as planned, is meant to connect children under nine with appropriate early intervention supports before they enter school or in the early school years. But if it creates a gap in NDIS-funded therapy access during the transition, children who are newly starting school may find themselves without the therapeutic support that was previously underpinning their educational participation.

This is the specific risk that parents and disability advocates are most focused on.

What Schools Are Required to Do

Regardless of what happens with the NDIS and Thriving Kids, schools have independent obligations. The Disability Standards for Education 2005 requires schools to make reasonable adjustments to enable students with disability to participate in education on the same basis as their peers. This applies from the moment of enrolment.

A school cannot use a child's NDIS status or Thriving Kids transition as a reason to withhold educational adjustments. If your child requires curriculum modifications, communication support strategies, or a specific classroom environment, those are school obligations — not NDIS obligations — and they exist regardless of what is happening with the child's NDIS plan.

This is a critical point for families navigating the transition: even if NDIS-funded therapy supports are delayed or disrupted by the Thriving Kids rollout, the school's independent obligations remain intact. You can and should push for educational adjustments through the school framework concurrently.

What NCCD Funding Means for Early School Entry

When a child with developmental delay or disability starts school, the school begins the process of documenting the adjustments it is providing in order to include the child in the NCCD data collection. This annual federal data collection determines the school's disability loading — the additional federal funding allocated based on the number of students with disability and the level of their support needs.

For parents, this matters because the NCCD documentation process — specifically the requirement for 10 weeks of documented adjustments — creates a paper trail of what the school is (and is not) providing. If you know how this process works, you can advocate for your child to be categorised at the correct level (Supplementary, Substantial, or Extensive) from the beginning of their schooling, rather than discovering years later that the school has categorised them at the QDTP (no targeted funding) level.

Early years of school are the period where this categorisation most often gets wrong — because children are new to the system, parents are still learning the processes, and schools are not always proactive about funding documentation for very young students.

What to Do Now

If your child is under nine and currently accessing NDIS early childhood supports:

1. Attend any NDIS planning or review meetings before the Thriving Kids transition date and ensure the plan clearly documents current therapies, supports, and the frequency of each
2. Ask your NDIS planner or LAC explicitly what the transition plan is for your child under Thriving Kids — when will they be transitioned, and what is the review process
3. Begin school enrolment planning early — the school's obligation to provide adjustments begins from enrolment, so engaging with the school's learning support team before your child starts gives you more time to establish the right foundation
4. Document your child's current support needs in functional language that schools understand — not just "has autism" but specific: "requires visual schedule transitions, communication supported by key word signing, sensory breaks every 45 minutes"

The Australia Disability Assessment Decoder covers how the NDIS-school boundary works in practice, what the NCCD process means for early school years, and how to engage with your state's educational assessment process from the beginning of your child's schooling — so that you are not starting from scratch once they are in Year 2 or 3.

Early school entry is the most critical juncture in the Australian special education journey. Getting the documentation and the school engagement right from the start makes every subsequent step easier.

See more Australia guides →