Thriving Kids: A conversation with Minister Jenny McAllister
In this episode, Aspect CEO Jacqui Borland and Autism Friendly Employment Manager Kristy Kelly speak with NDIS Minister Jenny McAllister about the Australian Government’s Thriving Kids program.
Together, they explore what the program means for children with developmental delay and children on the autism spectrum, and how it will support families to access help earlier.
Drawing on questions from the autism community, the conversation covers how Thriving Kids will work alongside the NDIS, whether a diagnosis is required, and what supports may look like in practice. It also highlights the role of educators, GPs and allied health professionals in early identification and support.
This episode is for parents, carers and professionals seeking information about the future of early childhood supports in Australia.
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Transcript
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So in your role, Kristy, you partner with organisations across Australia to reshape workplace culture, systems and practices so that Autistic and neurodivergent people, can be included and be successful. And you're also the mum of two teenagers, one of whom is Autistic. And so it's supporting your daughter, to access the same opportunities as her sister, has
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What is what has made you a strong advocate for the work that you do, and your motivation to influence change. So before we delve into our discussion today, I'd just like to acknowledge that we're on the traditional lands of the Dharawal Country pay respects, to the traditional custodians, and acknowledge their connection to, the land, sea, waterways and their community.
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So pay respect to them and their elders. And we welcome any Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who are, here with us today. I'd also just like to talk about Aspect’s, Inclusion Statement. We developed this with our Autistic staff, and we start every meeting with an inclusion statement to help people feel that they're welcome in the meeting.
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So it's something we read out. Everybody is welcome here. We want you to feel that it's okay to be authentically yourself. Please let us know if there's anything we can do to include you, and use whatever strategies you need to help you, help you feel relaxed. And to the audience, before we start, we're going to, make this conversation as accessible as possible.
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In, in using different formats. So audio, visual where we'll provide a transcript, to read as well. Also, just before we begin, just a comment about the language that we will use and how we'll talk about autism in today's conversation. So we will use identity-first language and we will refer to autism supports. We know that Autistic people and the autism community, you know, have different preferences for language, and that is fine
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in terms of how they refer to autism. The language we're using today is guided by our, our own community, that we work with and their preferences. So, Minister, when we, your team approached us about having this conversation, about Thriving Kids, we went out to the community, our community, and, asked them, what they would like us to talk to you about
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and we received, many, many, many responses from Autistic people, from parents, from support workers and from people in the community and in the sector. I think that just highlights how much interest there is in this program. Of course, so we're not going to be able to read out every question that we received about what we've done is pulled them together, found the ones that were most consistent in the themes.
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And we hope to be able to cover those off with you. And we will put any of any information that you refer to or that we talk about will go into the notes section of, of this resource. So
Great. Well thank you very much for having me. And thanks to you for taking the time to go to your community and crowdsource, from the people you're speaking with, some of the areas of interest, because I think we're conscious as a government that this is a change that's coming through.
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Any change can be challenging for a community, and I think our goal is to provide good information so people can prepare themselves, think about what it means for them. And hopefully take advantage of the benefits that I truly believe will come about through the implementation of Thriving Kids. So I'm very grateful to be here, and I'm looking forward to the conversation.
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Okay. All right, so we know that there is some confusion. The primary reason for having this conversation, some misconceptions around Thriving Kids. So perhaps if you would start off by just providing us with an overview of the program, who it's for, when it's going to be rolled out and I guess, what it means for families who may already have children who are on the NDIS?
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Yeah. So we want obviously all kids to do well, no matter where they are and what their circumstances. As a society, we want to create the circumstances where kids can kids can thrive. What we had heard is that for some families, the systems around the NDIS were not adequate to meet the needs of those families. And that was particularly the case for kids, with low to moderate support needs with autism or developmental delay, those families were finding that they were spending a lot of time and sometimes a lot of money seeking to get a diagnosis, so as to access the NDIS and what the the independent review of the NDIS told
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And some of your listeners and viewers would be familiar with some of those programs, because they still exist in States and Territories. They're things like supported playgroups, maternal child health centres, particular programs that might exist in an early learning context, some of the supports that are provided in schools. These things, which have often been referred to as foundational supports for children, have actually wound down significantly since the start of the NDIS, and Thriving Kids is really about building those support systems up.
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And that matters a lot for for kids and their families, because if you put those supports back in place, it means that children who are missing a milestone, whose parents are concerned about them, but who do not yet have a diagnosis, will be able to find a way to connect with good information, good referral pathways, perhaps early supports prior to getting a diagnosis and getting in early and supporting those kids and those families we think really matters.
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We, eagerly, watching the news about the rollout and, you know, with it, planned for October, that's only seven months away. So we're really keen to know, are all the States and Territories signed up? Have they all got implementation plans? And is, so is there going to be potentially some variation in terms of the scaling, how it's rolled out in terms of the geography or, you know, so how's that all that going?
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Because we know, you know, the States and Territories are very, integral to this, program rolling out. Yeah. So the States and Territories, going to take a really significant role in a couple of areas in providing, diagnostic and referral pathways in developing the parenting programs that are integral to the model and in providing targeted support, which might be one on one or might take might be conducted in groups.
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And the States and Territories have said to us that the way that they would like to do these things is by using the existing, infrastructure and settings that are in place so that to the greatest extent possible, these kinds of interventions can connect with the places where children and families are already playing and learning and visiting. So it probably will look a little bit different in each State and Territory, because each State and Territory will seek to use the organisations that are already in existence to to build up and scale up the supports that are available to families.
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I think all of the states, except for Queensland and Victoria have now signed the bilaterals. All of them are working on their implementation plans, which are due in the first half of this year, and all of them have committed to getting started in October. It's not something that you can do immediately. They services will take time to build up again.
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So has the government, in, I guess, exploring Thriving Kids and foundational supports, looked at some of, the programs that, you know, used to be in place that, were thought to be, you know, good and, had good outcomes? And, I guess what is the intention of potentially, re, you know, re launching some of those or using what's been learned from those programs to inform what's going forward?
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Yeah. The Government, Minister Butler and myself were really keen to draw on the wealth of evidence that is out there about early childhood development, including for Autistic children and children with developmental delay. And so there were two key interventions. One was setting up the Thriving Kids Advisory Body that was chaired by professor Frank Oberklaid. The other was conducting a parliamentary inquiry, which was led by two paediatricians who happened to be parliamentarians, Monique Ryan and Doctor Mike Freelander.
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That committee, I think, received 400 submissions and had seven public inquiries. Yeah. And so the net effect of those two things was to do, I think, a pretty thorough examination of some of the Australian evidence about the programs we've have had or do have, and the effect that they had for children that some really nice examples came through in that work.
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For example, there's been a really successful, peer mentoring program in Victoria - ICAN which, you know, many sort of contributors spoke really highly of, there's been other programs where, maternal child health nurses have been explicitly trained in utilising some of the diagnostic tools so that children, who have particular developmental needs can be identified early.
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It's actually got lots of good evidence of that in practice, that works, but it's a practice that is not particularly well suited to the individualised package model of the NDIS. These are, programs and practices and interventions that actually work best in different kinds of settings, mainstream settings where kids are, and I've spoken already about some of that, you know, it's playgroups, it's early childhood, it's a maternal child health centre,
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it's a GP. These are all opportunities for people with professional expertise to interact in really positive ways with parents, and to start to work out in a teaming and shared way, how best to support those kids. So you mentioned, you know, we talked about the States and Territories and potentially they might do different, slightly different things. And we know in Australia, our states and territories love to all do something a little bit different.
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So what will the Commonwealth’s role be or approach be in terms of I guess it's that overarching national approach or consistency? What do you see will be the federal role in this? So two things, Jacqui. The first is that I was really pleased that First Ministers and the Prime Minister came together to endorse the national model for Thriving Kids.
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And so it really has four elements good information that's consistent nationally for parents, educators and other people working with kids, great referral and diagnostic pathways so that we can identify children and assist them earlier, an emphasis on parenting, recognising that parents are the first teachers and are the people who most employers who most influence the life course of their children, particularly for young children at preschool age.
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And fourthly, the need for targeted interventions and supports for for some children and families. So that's the core model that underpins Thriving Kids. And then it is up to States and Territories to work out how to tailor that to their specific circumstances. In terms of what the Commonwealth is going to focus on, there's some key areas where we've obviously got a capacity to make a difference.
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It makes sense for some of the big informational resources to be provided nationally. We're talking about online services, telephone services, possibly, Medicare related services, those things where the Commonwealth has the big levers are where we can play a role, and we can also play a role in workforce. But States and Territories were really keen that they wished to deliver the face-to-face services to build up those service systems in, in their own jurisdictions.
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I think that's great. And what it means is that the bulk of the $4 billion that's being dedicated to this program will be administered by the States and Territories, so that they can build up that direct service provision. Okay. Thank you. We will talk a little bit about workforce in a little while, but before we get there, so some of the people who shared their questions or their concerns with us, understandably were interested in what Thriving Kids means to their own experience.
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And so Kristy has got some scenarios, to pose to you, which will sort of illustrate some of the questions that came through. So I'm going to hand over to Kristy. Wonderful. Great, thank you so much. So obviously, as Jacqui has just said, a lot of the parents asked us questions around eligibility and diagnosis, Minister.
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And bearing in mind that the children who Thriving Kids is set up to actually support, a lot of them haven't actually even been born yet. We've come up with these fictional scenarios, so I'll work them through, and ask a couple of questions, after them as well. So in the first scenario, let's say Sue is a neurodivergent single parent from Southwest Sydney, with three children, so ten, eight and three.
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Now, her ten-year-old son has a co-occurring intellectual impairment, diagnosed Autistic and is high, complex needs. He attends a specialised school. Her daughter, on the other hand, aged eight, has been diagnosed AuDHD so Autistic and ADHD and attends a New South Wales public school and both of them actually receive NDIS funding currently. Now Sue's three-year-old son is already showing signs of some developmental delays, and possibly autism, but hasn't yet been formally diagnosed.
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Sue’s taken her three-year-old to the community health clinic, for advice from birth. And they identified that her son was meeting some, but maybe not all of the, age appropriate developmental milestones. She also obviously sees GP quite regularly, who knows her family history. So that in mind, in this scenario, what might Sue do under Thriving Kids to get the support for her son?
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Well, I think the first thing you'd observe is that Sue is obviously a very attentive and loving parent. You know, Sue is very engaged by the sounds of it in the lives of her three children, and Sue is also already doing all the right things in connecting with some of the supports that are around her in Southwest Sydney.
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So she's connecting with her GP, she's connecting with a community health centre. These are all really strong foundations for for her and her family, At the moment, probably what the GP might tell Sue is that the most, the most straightforward way for her to get support for her youngest child is to go and get a diagnosis that that's probably what would happen today.
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What will be different about Thriving Kids is that we would expect that both the GP and the community nurse that Sue’s engaging with will have a really good sense about what to look out for, in the case of her young child, although a GP and a in a community nurse are probably already well trained for this.
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But importantly, those two professionals will also have a really good sense of the supports that exist in her local area. That might be appropriate for her youngest child. As that that little boy, starts to engage with those supports, those other professionals in Sue's life, which now include her nurse and her GP and perhaps, some other providers who are either providing parenting support to Sue or targeted supports to her little boy,
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they might say to her, your child appears to have quite significant, the potential for quite significant disability. We think it's time for you to go down the diagnostic path. Or alternatively, they might provide reassurance to Sue and say, we think what you're doing at the moment is sufficient. We're seeing progress on some of those milestones that you were worried about. At the moment,
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we don't think that there's anything additional that you do need to do. And what's different about that experience is that Sue's not fending for herself. She's not taking her, her package, and having to independently decide, without much guidance, what kinds of supports she's going to secure for her children. We hope she'll be in receipt of really strong advice about the kinds of supports that are best suited for her, for her little boy.
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And and she'll be being supported to access those in her local community. Wonderful. Thank you. So, does Sue need to access and pay for diagnostic assessments to then be able to get access, to the support that she needs? To Thriving Kids supports? Yes. So, Thriving Kids is not diagnosis dependent. Obviously, some measure of assessment will need to be worked up by the States and Territories, so that they can assess which children need to be prioritised for these kinds of supports.
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But it's not diagnosis dependent. And we think that's important. Okay. Wonderful. Leads me on to my next question. So you've mentioned assessments in some sort of those being required. Do you understand or have any identification right now of what would be used to distinguish between those children who might need Thriving Kids support and those that are also actually eligible under NDIS?
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So the NDIS will continue to be there for people with permanent and significant disability. And of course, for your listeners, of course, autism is is permanent and but not all people with disability have a need for significant supports. And so the distinction we're drawing, is between programs that work for children whose needs are low to moderate, whilst also maintaining the opportunities for access to the NDIS for children with high support things.
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Okay. Wonderful. Thank you. I'm going to move on to the second scenario. So Ajay and Priya live in rural WA. They are originally from India and their first language is Hindi. They have a two-year-old little girl, and the nearest community health centre is one hour's drive away from where they are. They don't have a regular GP, as many GP's in the area are coming in, serving for a couple of years and then moving on to the larger cities.
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Now their daughter hasn't yet met any developmental milestones and is non-speaking. She doesn't interact much with either of her parents. So Ajay and Priya have had, both their daughter's eyesight and hearing tested, which has all come back, within the normal range. They're understandably first-time parents and concerned about their daughter. But don't know if she will develop in her own time or if they need to further investigate with a GP.
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So in this scenario, Minister, what would you suggest the parents do? Again, Ajay and Priya are already thinking about what's best for their little girl like most parents. Under a Thriving Kids scenario, the thing that might be different would be that they'd be better information available online or through a telephone service. For for parents who are worried about their kids. We've already, had a lot of feedback, actually, about how the existing national parenting resources, are well used and well-loved by parents, but we see opportunities to, to build those resources up, including building up some autism-specific resources that might be useful for parents like Ajay and Priya.
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There are some really particular challenges for this family, because they're living by the sound of it, in a pretty remote place. We are conscious of the need to build that primary health care generally. And so you've seen the Government make, very significant multi-billion-dollar investments into primary health care. And we're now in the happy situation where 96% of Australians live within 20 minutes’ drive of a bulk billing GP.
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But it's likely that this family would benefit from access to a GP and that may well be the advice that they receive if the if they ring a national phone line and start to make an inquiry about about their daughter's needs. Wonderful. Would they so would, Ajay and Priya's daughter be eligible for Thriving Kids, or would they likely be fast tracked, given where they're at
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onto the NDIS? I think it's a fiction. I accept it's a fictional example. I think it's a little bit hard to tell from the information we have. The key thing for this family is that we'd like them to have a referral pathway that puts them in touch with people who could help them answer that question. Thanks very much, Minister.
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Back to you, Jacqui. Okay. Thank you. Some of the questions that we got, relate to the diversity and the complexity of autism that we have and developmental delay, and how the program will be delivered, and and, I guess manage that diversity and sometimes those changing needs, that Autistic people have across their, their life in terms of ages and stages.
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So how will a model the funding model accommodate children whose needs fluctuate? So, you know, they may, come into Thriving Kids, but then, the that, you know, there may be, reason or concern that is more complex. So is there going to be that flexibility to jump or to, transition or go, you know, from Thriving Kids to the NDIS, and then potentially continue to use Thriving Kids?
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And how will that intersection work?
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I think they the main thing we would emphasise is that in those early years for children eight and under, we'd like families and children to get early access to diagnostic pathways. And for parents to have parenting support so that they're in a good position to support their own children and to support each other, and their, and their broader family in, in the in the parenting journey.
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Both of those interventions lend themselves to having parents who are well-equipped to go and get additional information and additional support if they see that their child's needs are changing, because it is parents who are best placed to observe that, to witness it and what's needed is really good information and good pathways for a parent who's having that experience right now, that's not the case all the time.
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Some families, of course, do access excellent services, and that provide them with support for that. But others, really do feel that the only pathway for them is NDIS. And as many of your viewers and listeners would know, that can be quite time consuming, and it doesn't always work out in the way that a family expects. I had a really nice conversation probably about almost a year ago now, in one of the, local area coordination centres, and they were talking about a family that's supported where family came in, essentially really had it in their mind that what they needed was NDIS support, had a really good conversation with a really skilful person in
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in the LAC and that person said, you know, you might want to consider this playgroup. I think you could consider this course. It might be that you need some targeted therapy for this particular milestone. You can obtain that through this community health practitioner. And if you do those, if you go down this pathway, we'll be able to allocate access to these services relatively quickly.
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And that family went off, explored those things, did start accessing those services and by themselves made the decision that that was good for them, that actually a diagnosis in NDIS was not the right course for their child or their family. And I think bearing in, I think that's been an important feature of how we've thought about the interventions we're making.
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We want families to have better choices earlier on because not every child needs to be needs to have NDIS support to thrive. And some of the questions, that I've heard from parents and I guess in my own mind, thinking about Thriving Kids and you talk about pathways, is it a linear pathway or is it, so don't do you into the the game board and go from, you know, along the pathway through Thriving Kids from information to parent education to targeted supports and then to the NDIS if if you need or is there an option to sort of come in at different points or access from different points?
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I think the latter is, is a more accurate description. I don't the service system isn't designed as a linear progression through those three, those, those different kinds of supports. The thing for your viewers to know is that the NDIS will always be there for people whose disability is both permanent and significant, for that group of people who have high support needs.
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It's a really important feature of Australian, Australia's, you know, social security, and support network. We're really committed to it being there for the long term. But we're also committed to building up supports outside of that system so that families can get the help that they need earlier, where that's appropriate. Okay. And one of the other, questions is so within the model, of Thriving Kids as it's being described, there's a big element in terms of groups.
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So how will the government, make sure or have oversight that groups, evidence based that the outcomes from groups, are positive for children that are part of them and that it's not just a cost saving, measure because it's cheaper to put kids in groups and individuals?. So I think first ministers are really clear that they want this to succeed.
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And so I would expect that we'll see evaluation frameworks developed for the program. There's also baked into the national agreement, a point in time where an overall evaluation of the program takes place. Of course, something like this, any sensible government will review what's happening and, and tailor it and refine it as we go. We're really committed to making it work,
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and that does mean engaging with the evidence and collecting more evidence along the way, along the way, as we as we do the work. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. So we did touch on workforce earlier. So I'm just going to hand back to Kristy. So we've got I guess some of the questions that have come through, from, professionals and people who are working in the sector.
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So we've got some questions about workforce. Right. Thanks, Jacqui. So, as been mentioned, Minister, obviously we know that the Australian workforce is going to be critical enabler for Thriving Kids thinking about educators and allied health professionals. If I can give you another scenario, just to speak through. So let's assume we have Courtney. She's an early childhood educator, at a preschool in Queensland.
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Courtney recognises that one of their children communicates differently, and her development doesn't seem to be as consistent as that of her peers. In this example, what would Courtney do and what's her best approach to access the right support for that child? So, Courtney has already identified a challenge and this is a really important feature of our early childhood workforce.
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You know, we actually have been on a long journey towards professionalisation, and we've got really skilled, well-trained people, working in, in, in early learning. And that's a really that's a really strong start that any sensible government would seek to harness and use to support this cohort of kids. So good job, Courtney. Courtney should have access to a really good, list of services that are in the local area.
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But she should also have a really clear sense in her state or territory about what the referral pathway is into Thriving Kids. And so she'll be in a position to make that suggestion to the parent of this child and help that parent start to connect with the services that are relevant to their family. Wonderful. Thank you. A follow up question.
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So we know, Minister, that there's currently a workforce shortage of allied health professionals. How will this shortage be addressed to ensure that the services that we are wanting to make available through Thriving Kids will be available? I think one of the really interesting things about the NDIS is it's seen a very significant growth in allied health workforce and that workforce is very familiar with the priorities and needs of people with disability, and that's a really positive outcome.
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Over the last ten years of investment in in disability through the NDIS, we should expect to be able to harness that. In, in the rollout of services, albeit services that are being delivered through a different model. The States and Territories will take responsibility for sourcing and commissioning the the targeted supports, and so it'll be up to them to really decide how to access that allied health workforce.
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But as a National Government, we've obviously been very interested in workforce issues, to be honest, right across the care economy. So whether that is, you know, early childhood in allied health, in building up, the rural workforces in, in, in nursing, or for GP's or in other health areas. It's a real focus for the Government because we're so conscious that our ability to deliver quality services is really dependent on having a skilled workforce.
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There might be some really specific things that we can do as part of Thriving Kids in relation to, educational settings and, and other natural settings where children are. I know, for example, your organisation has experience in Positive Partnerships that provides a really good evidence base about some of the things we can accomplish when we work with learning institutions to help them build up the skills and capabilities to engage by both parents and Autistic children more positively in in a learning environment.
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And, Minister, how do we ensure the next generation of therapists that are coming through are going to be Thriving Kids ready?
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I think that we really do have a terrific allied health workforce that are, much more used to working with people with disability now than they would have been ten years ago, simply because their of the resources that have been applied through the NDIS. We are really interested in harnessing that capability and making sure that, those skills and capabilities can be drawn into Thriving Kids even as they continue to serve people who who are in the NDIS system itself.
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Wonderful. Back to you, Jacqui. Okay. Thank you. So, Minister, you are overseeing, a really significant, development and rollout of, you know, a really important program. So let's turn our minds to what success will look like. And when you're sitting back in a few years and looking at this, you know, what do you see as the benefits that are going to come from Thriving Kids versus the benefits that come from individualised, funding through NDIS?
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How, how when you sit back in a couple of years, what do you hope success is going to what success is going we're going to see? I really hope that parents feel confident that they have the information that they need to access the supports that their children need, and that's a very simple way of articulating it. But at the moment, the advice we have is that that's not always happening.
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I hope, too, that the supports that children are accessing in these very early years are well informed by the evidence and the advice. We've got so many amazing professionals in health and education who are really well placed to help kids. Our big opportunity is to take that big evidence base that's been built up about supporting children and really drive hard at implementation in partnership with States and Territories, so that families are getting access to supports that will really work and really benefit their kids.
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I'm wondering, obviously, you've done a lot of, you're doing a lot of work and, visiting a lot of places. So is there, you know, a particular place for parents that you've met that have really, you know, helped you understand what your vision is for Thriving Kids? One of the beautiful things about this job is that people sometimes are willing to be really open about their own experience and what has happened in their family.
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And I met this beautiful group of parents, recently at Plum Tree. These families spoke about two really powerful things. One was the power of community. When they brought their children into an environment where they felt truly accepted, and felt that their children could truly be themselves and have having, a safe space for their children helped them engage constructively, positively, confidently in the broader social context that their family was living and working in.
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The second thing was really just this parent who spoke to me about the significance of moving from being a passenger to a driver in his family's journey. He said that his initial experience had been of allowing professionals to to speak to him about his child, but that engaging with some of the parenting programs. He stepped into the driver's seat and started to understand his own role and his own significance in shaping the life of his child.
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And it was obviously very powerful for him. And to be honest, it was very moving for me to hear about him, speak about what these reasonably modest investments in support to him had meant, because the impact for him and his family and his child were profound.
Okay. Thank you. Okay. Well, Minister, thank you very much for your time today.
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And I guess the opportunity, to discuss Thriving Kids and, you know, some of our questions about what it means and what will mean for families for, for, children, who have developmental delay, potentially autism, as well as, professionals who work in this space. It's been really interesting. So thank you.
Thank you, thank you both.
