NDIS Children: The areas where one in 10 tweens are on the NDIS

The Age

12 hours ago

But participation data reveals another dynamic that will make moving children off the scheme more complicated: the highest rates of children on the NDIS continue to be in regional and outer-metropolitan areas, where schools tend to have poorer resourcing and families have fewer other options to get help.
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The trend underscores the equity issues at stake as the federal and state governments seek to move children off the scheme and onto an as-yet undesigned 'foundational supports' system in the long term, with the NDIS serving as a lifeline in areas without other services.
NDIS participation rates in lower socio-economic regional areas are as much as double those in wealthy city areas.
In NSW, North Sydney has one of the lowest participation rates for children, with 3.5 per cent of both nine to 14-year-olds and under-eights, whereas on the NSW Mid North Coast, those rates are 10.1 per cent for older children and 9.7 per cent for younger children.
In Melbourne's inner east, 4.6 per cent of under-eights and 4.8 per cent of older children are on the scheme. This is a far lower participation rate than at Loddon, near Bendigo, where 8.7 per cent of young children and 10.5 per cent of older children are participants.
The highest participation rates in March 2025 were in northern Adelaide and South Australia's Barossa Valley, where more than 11 per cent of 9 to 14-year-old children are NDIS participants, as are more than 8 per cent of children under nine years old.
But even in inner-city areas, where families have more access to services, children's participation rates increased in the two years to March 2025.
The exception is in the Northern Territory – a sign of continued challenges in accessing the NDIS in more remote areas.
Laverty, who is now chief executive of disability service Aruma, said the higher uptake among regional families was no surprise as they can struggle to get help for learning delays at school, or access services such as speech therapy in the private system. Once eligible, children can linger on waitlists for months.
'Aruma has waiting lists of families seeking support that miss out because of allied health shortages in country Australia,' Laverty said, noting this was exacerbated by the lack of state and territory services outside the NDIS.
Laverty said wait times meant the window for early intervention could often close before a child got the help they needed.
'That delay is resulting in children missing out on the intervention that may prevent them ever needing an NDIS package in the long term,' he said.
While the 2023 independent NDIS review recommended children younger than nine enter the scheme under early intervention pathways, to reduce the need for supports over their lifetime, a NDIA spokesperson said most children entered the scheme under developmental delay provisions.
'Over half of the children with developmental delay continue in the scheme after being diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder,' they said.
In December, the federal government announced $4.5 million over two years for the NDIA to design and consult on an early intervention pathway to better support children younger than nine with developmental delay or disability.
with Millie Muroi
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