As the Herald reported last week, slowing the growth of the $50 million NDIS will be key to the federal government’s savings when it delivers its budget next month.
A major policy already in train to assist with this is the $4 billion Thriving Kids program for children with low to moderate needs, such as level one and two autism, the first stage of which will begin in October, three months after originally promised.
Announced last year, Thriving Kids will see children with low to moderate needs delivered services where they “live, learn and play”, instead of being enrolled on the NDIS.
The system will be jointly funded by federal, state and territory governments.
Families impacted understandably have reservations about cost-shifting onto the states after years of the NDIS making these treatments a federal matter. For children of school age, it is expected that this will be where they will now access most of their support, but schools can only do so much, advocates say.
It is reasonable to have reservations when your child’s treatment is what ends up on the chopping block, even if many would agree the bloated NDIS needs reform.
But those with concerns about the ability to deliver such supports in a school setting should take heart in today’s story from health editor Kate Aubusson, about a project underway in western Sydney public schools, where 128 children and their families have undergone a version of a gold-standard treatment for children with disruptive, aggressive or destructive behaviours. A version of the program, called Parent-Child Interaction Therapy, will commence in the Catholic sector later this year.
Inside purpose-built clinics at Ingleburn and Condell Park public schools, autistic children with an anxiety-driven need to control or avoid demands known as “pathological demand avoidance”, as well as children with conduct disorder, oppositional defiant disorder and ADHD have undertaken sessions with their parents.
The trial has been hugely successful, about nine in 10 who took part showed improvements such that these behaviours were no longer considered a problem three months later.
For families in south-west and western Sydney, where private psychological services for child behaviour issues can be prohibitively expensive and public waitlists stretch up to two years, a free program in schools has been a game-changer.
Locating the service in the child’s school also makes treatment more accessible, and opens up the opportunity to more easily involve a child’s teacher – a key part of the puzzle when dealing with behaviour.
But the program currently runs on Medical Research Future Fund grants and other donations, which isn’t sustainable in the long term. The researchers want it to be embedded in the NSW school system, such as through the established GOT IT (Getting On Track In Time) program.
If the state is to start to shouldering more of the responsibility for early interventions for kids with autism, these programs must be reliably and fully funded. Establishing them as department-managed initiatives, rather than grant-funded one-offs, must be a priority.
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