CONSTITUENCY STATEMENTS

Dr RYAN (Kooyong) (09:36): Thriving Kids is the Commonwealth's partial replacement for NDIS support for children aged eight and under with developmental delay and autism who have low to moderate support needs. Last year, the House Standing Committee on Health, Aged Care and Disability found that the NDIS was never designed or equipped to accommodate the needs of young children with mild to moderate developmental delay and autism.

That committee endorsed the principle of Thriving Kids as a foundational supports alternative. It called for funded supports at each transition milestone and a phased rollout. We're now a fortnight away from the rollout of Thriving Kids.

It has already been postponed once, and there are real concerns about the readiness of the states and territories to launch this program. The Victorian government is one of the last two states to be clear about its plans. It has now announced that Thriving Kids will be delivered in Victoria through existing educational settings.

The scheme will be built on the maternal child health and early childhood education systems, with new universal development assessments pre kinder and pre school. Allied health professionals and support workers will be employed by the government and co-located in maternal child health, kindergartens and early parenting centres. It might seem logical to success that families should access support in places with which they are already familiar, but South Australia has already tried embedding allied health workers directly inside schools through its child wellbeing program.

That attempt failed. Within three years, the program was transferred back into the state's healthcare system. No Victoria-specific allied health workforce plan, recruitment target, or procurement or commissioning details have been published to date.

Allied health bodies are concerned that small businesses will be squeezed out as the state starts to take direct responsibility for service delivery, and the location of this service within the Department of Education is ringing alarm bells about capacity and expertise. Thriving Kids is due to commence in two weeks in every Australian jurisdiction, but I'm really concerned that with its rushed and opaque rollout the Commonwealth is handing money to the states and allowing them to potentially replicate models that have already been proven to be duplicative and ineffective.

I ask the Albanese government to provide clarity for all Australians about the extent and detail of its plans to oversight the Thriving Kids rollout, and about the scope and extent of the services which will become available to Victorian children from 1 October 2026.