Early Intervention Pathway for Children Younger Than 9

Overview

The early intervention pathway for children younger than 9 initiative refers to how in the future, a child younger than 9 will move through the steps of receiving support from the NDIS.

The design of this new pathway was a recommendation from the independent NDIS Review published on 7 December 2023.

The Government gave the NDIA permission to start designing and consulting on a new early intervention pathway for children younger than 9 on 14 December 2024.

The new pathway refers to both the journey of how children move through those steps and what the experience of moving through those steps feels like for children and their parents and carers.

The design of the new pathway is influenced by many different factors including legislation, rules, operational guidelines, people, processes and systems.

While all children will move through some common steps in the new pathway, the exact steps that they take and their experience of those steps is expected to naturally be different.

It is important that in designing the new pathway, the voices of parents and carers with a lived experience of having a child or children in the Scheme younger than nine are heard. The NDIA has established several codesign mechanisms that will result in the voices of over 100 parents and carers with a lived experience shaping the design of the new pathway across 2025. These codesign mechanisms include workshops, surveys and 1-1 interviews. Parents and carers have been recruited via an Expression of Interest process with Participant First members.

In the future the NDIA will also improve the pathway for children over 9, but the priority right now is children aged 9 and under.

Children’s Pathway Parent and Carer Engagement Group meetings

We want to do a better job of communicating about the co-design, consultation and engagement opportunities and explaining what reforms will mean for participants.

A summary of the meetings can be found below:

Participate

If you are interested in getting involved in co-designing improvements to the NDIS, you can sign up to Participant First.

Participants, family members and carers will be paid for participating in accordance with our Participant Engagement Payment Policy.

Contact

For more information, please contact [email protected].