The recognition of the dire need for a tier of high-quality disability supports to address the significant needs of children with developmental concern, delay, and/or disability outside the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS), as well as of their parents, guardians, families, and other informal supports, is very welcome. We hope a well-designed and appropriately-funded system of general and targeted Foundational Supports will deliver many benefits. This type of investment could help reduce the need for some children with disability to obtain an individual NDIS plan, because their life chances are improved, or defended, by accessing Foundational Supports. However, for this to be achieved, it is essential for every element of Foundational Supports to be co-designed, built on a fundamental commitment to inclusion and not segregation, receive consistent and adequate long-term funding, and align with the commitments of governments in Australia’s Disability Strategy 2021-2031.
The settings where Foundational Supports will be delivered for children, such as schools and early childhood education and care centres, will need to be made fully accessible and inclusive. Adopting a national Inclusive Education Strategy should be one important step toward this. Additionally, we believe both general and targeted Foundational Supports should be available to all children, irrespective of whether they have an individual NDIS plan, in settings like schools and early childhood education and care centres for reasons of practicality and to prevent a new form of segregation and exclusion emerging. It is impossible to imagine how targeted Foundational Supports could be provided in shared spaces in a way that ‘quarantines’ them as only supporting designated children, without causing harmful forms of separation and division among and between children. All Foundational Supports should be delivered in ways that advance and defend inclusion.
Successful Foundational Supports will depend on consistent and adequate long term-funding underpinned by a strategically coherent and public-facing strategy. General Foundational Supports for children should include a strong focus on peer support as a very cost-effective way to connect people to information, supports, and each other. Further, capacity-building supports (perhaps named with greater specificity) should be available to parents, guardians, families, and other informal supporters, as well as in the broader community to ensure wider societal change is achieved. Although parents and guardians with disability are not included within the target groups mentioned in the Discussion Paper, we believe there will be sufficient similarities in needs that it makes sense to change this. Information, resources, and advice need to be provided in a broad range of accessible formats and through diverse channels including a focus on in-person support on the ground in local communities.
Targeted Foundational Supports will likely have a greater focus on children, but we strongly recommend careful consideration of how these are delivered. Children should not be removed from learning or other activities to receive segregated one-to-one or small group therapies or for therapies unrelated to their experiences of inclusion at school or in early childhood education and care centres. These supports should be provided outside of hours in non-clinical settings, such as the family home. As stated above, Foundational Supports should not only achieve inclusion; they should uphold inclusion in the manner in which they are delivered.