Disability support outside the NDIS up for discussion

With the government looking to take pressure off the National Disability Insurance Scheme, consultations are about to get under way about what broader disability support might look like.

Public consultations are about to get underway about how to support people with disability outside the National Disability Insurance Scheme.

The path to building more support for people with disabilities outside the National Disability Insurance Scheme takes a significant step on Friday with the first public consultation on so-called “foundational supports” for the nation’s 5.5 million disabled people.

Around 2000 people have already registered to participate in a forum to discuss what foundational supports will look like.

Building an ecosystem of foundational supports was a key recommendation of the NDIS review, part of its plan to make the $44bn a year scheme sustainable into the future.

The steep cost curve of the NDIS, currently supporting 660,000 participants, has been a thorny issue for the Albanese government. Last month Labor pushed a series of reforms to the scheme through parliament aimed at bringing costs under control, having committed to a cost growth target of 8 per cent commencing in 2026.

Partly this will be achieved by supporting more people with disability with foundational supports outside the scheme, though NDIS Minister Bill Shorten has said no one will be ­pushed off the scheme until the services they need are available elsewhere.

The federal and state governments have been working on what these supports might look like, given many will have to be delivered through the states.

But the government has committed to ensuring a public say in what their design, with the first tranche of consultation beginning Friday.

It will first focus on general supports that “deliver access to trusted information and advice and build the capacity of all people with disability.” This would also include advice for families and carers. The second tranche of consultation will discuss ‘‘targeted supports” that operate between mainstream services such as early childhood, schools and community mental health and the specialist supports that would be provided through the NDIS.

One of the critical areas for targeted supports will be young children with milder levels of autism and developmental delay.

State and federal governments say that foundational supports will be progressively rolled out from July next year.