I’ve been in disability and aged care for the better part of a decade now — starting as a support worker, spending a stretch in aged care, and eventually building my own NDIS provider business from the ground up. In that time I’ve sat through more “the sky is falling” moments than I can count. Price guide freezes. Plan management shake-ups. Registration changes. Every time, the community braces for impact, and every time, we adapt.
But I’ll be honest with you: what’s unfolding right now feels different. This isn’t a tweak around the edges. It’s the biggest structural shift the Scheme has seen since it launched, and if you’re a participant, a family member, a support worker, or a provider like me, you need to understand what’s actually coming — not the panicked version doing the rounds in Facebook groups, but the real timeline and the real impact.
Why this is happening
Let’s start with the honest context, because I think providers owe participants honesty here. The NDIS has been growing at close to 10% a year, and the government wants that down to around 5-6%. The projected cost of the Scheme by 2030 was tracking toward $70 billion, and the target now is closer to $55 billion. Health Minister Mark Butler laid this out at the National Press Club, and the plan is to bring roughly 160,000 people — mostly those the government considers to have “lower support needs” — off the NDIS and into a new system of Foundational Supports instead.
I’m not going to pretend this doesn’t worry me. I’ve watched clients build entire lives around community participation funding — the volunteering gig, the art class, the footy training that gave someone with autism a reason to get out of bed on a Tuesday. When you start drawing lines around who counts as “low support needs,” you’re making a judgment call about someone’s life from a spreadsheet, and I’ve been doing this long enough to know that plans on paper rarely capture the full picture of a person.
That said, I also understand the sustainability argument, and I’d rather talk to my clients straight about what’s coming than let them find out the hard way at their next plan review.
The timeline, in plain English
This is where I want to save you some scrolling, because the amount of misinformation floating around right now is genuinely exhausting. Here’s what’s locked in and roughly when:
**1 July 2026** – Mandatory registration kicks in for Supported Independent Living (SIL) and platform providers. If you’re running an unregistered SIL service, this is already your problem.
**1 October 2026** – Two big ones land together. First, “Thriving Kids” begins rolling out — children under 9 with developmental delay or autism assessed as having low-to-moderate needs start shifting out of the NDIS and into this new Foundational Supports stream. Second, budgets for social, civic and community participation start being progressively adjusted downward, with the government flagging cuts of up to 50% in this category over time.
**1 December 2026** – The claim window shrinks hard, from two years down to just 90 days. For providers, this is a big deal — if your billing systems and admin processes aren’t tight, you’re going to lose money on legitimate claims simply because you missed the window.
**1 April 2027** – New Framework Planning begins for participants over 18 (this was originally slated for mid-2026 but got pushed back for more consultation). This replaces the current planning approach with a much more structured process around fixed budgets, plan end dates, and scheduled reassessment.
**1 January 2028** – New functional-capacity-based eligibility rules apply to new applicants first, with existing participants reassessed over a longer transition period. This is the shift away from diagnosis-based access and toward “how does this actually affect your daily life” assessments.
**Through to 2030** – Plan management and support coordination move to a commissioned (contracted) model, and provider registration requirements expand more broadly, particularly for personal care and daily living supports.
One detail I want to flag because it trips people up: unscheduled plan reassessments are being restricted to exceptional circumstances only. Right now about one in five plans gets reassessed each year, often resulting in funding increases. That safety valve is closing, so getting your plan right the first time is about to matter a lot more than it used to.
What this means if you’re a participant or family member
If your child is under 9 and has a developmental delay or autism diagnosis with lower support needs, start paying attention now — not in September. Thriving Kids is designed to catch this exact group first, and the government has committed to building alternative supports, but “committed to building” and “already built and tested” are two very different things in my experience with this Scheme.
If a meaningful chunk of your current plan is community participation funding, expect that line item to shrink over the next 12-18 months. This doesn’t mean the funding disappears overnight, but I’d start having conversations with your support coordinator now about what a leaner community participation budget looks like and how to protect the activities that matter most.
And if you’re due for a plan reassessment in the next year or two, don’t wait until the last minute to gather evidence. Under the new rules, getting it wrong the first time is going to be much harder to fix on the fly.
What this means if you’re a provider
I won’t sugarcoat this part either. If you’re not registered and you’re delivering SIL or operating through a platform model, that changes from 1 July 2026, full stop. If your billing and claims processes still rely on the old “we’ll catch it up eventually” mentality, the 90-day claim window in December is going to expose that fast — I’d be auditing your claims turnaround right now, not waiting for the deadline to arrive.
More broadly, I think the providers who come out the other side of this well are the ones who diversify. Foundational Supports is a genuinely new market, not just a consolation prize for people leaving the NDIS, and providers who position early to deliver into that space — alongside their existing NDIS work — are going to be better placed than the ones who wait and see.
My honest take, after 8 years of this
Every major NDIS change I’ve lived through has come with genuine upside and genuine cost, and this one’s no different. Tighter targeting and better fraud controls are things I actually support — I’ve seen firsthand how badly the Scheme’s reputation gets dragged through the mud by a small number of bad actors. But I’ve also seen how much good a bit of flexible community participation funding can do for someone’s mental health and sense of belonging, and I don’t think a spreadsheet target of 5-6% growth fully captures what gets lost when that shrinks.
My advice, for what it’s worth: don’t panic, but don’t wait either. Read the actual timeline, not the group chat version of it. Talk to your support coordinator or provider about what’s specific to your plan. And if you’re a provider reading this — get your registration and your claims processes sorted well before the deadlines, because “well before” is going to look a lot better than “the week of.”
I’ll keep tracking this as more detail comes through, particularly on what Foundational Supports actually looks like in practice. That’s the piece nobody can answer with real confidence yet — including the government.