NDIS supports for participants who are parents

This report gives advice to the National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIA) Board on understanding the support participant parents need to fulfil their goals and develop strong families.

The Independent Advisory Council (IAC) wrote this report. When we say ‘we’ we mean the IAC.

Our recommendations

We recommend that NDIA:

  1. Improves NDIS practice to get involved early and build ability.

  2. Provides reasonable and necessary support that is person centred, family focused and develops greater support networks.

  3. Develops specialised support coordination roles.

  4. Makes sure child protection agencies can push to get plan reviews done.

We believe mainstream agencies should change to meet their duties to NDIS participants.

When we use the term ‘mainstream supports’ this means supports you can receive from other government funded services such as health and education.

What we found in our research

  • The NDIS often does not get involved early enough when participants become parents. The NDIS needs to see the parenting role of parents, build informal supports, and work with mainstream services.

  • Mainstream systems are not providing the services they are responsible for to participants who are parents.

  • Many participants who are parents have their children removed before their NDIS supports are changed to consider pregnancy and parenting roles.

  • Many parents who have a disability face bias when accessing services.

  • Each family is different, and families function as a unit. Spending time together having fun builds family bonds.

  • Parents with intellectual disability depend on their support network. Those who have little support have lower levels of wellbeing.

  • Data shows high rates of parents with intellectual disability and psychosocial disability involved in the child protection system. This could mean there is a gap in having access to the right services.

  • Strategies to support parents should focus on specific skill development. Programs should be performance based rather than knowledge based.

  • NDIA’s current practice does not flag when a participant is pregnant and may require added support.

  • NDIA views skill building for parenting as the responsibility of mainstream services. Current NDIA practice does not give support for parenting training programs.

Read our report here

NDIS support for participants who are parents, September 2019 - IAC advice (PDF 832KB)

NDIS support for participants who are parents, September 2019 - IAC advice summary (PDF 139KB).