NDIS participant consumer choice is being eroded, and that’s not ok
The NDIS put the disabled community in the driver’s seat of their care. They were on the ground experiencing their disability, they’d know best. This common sense is under threat with proposed changes in legislation. Advocates share consequences and the need to protect choice.
The NDIS hasn’t been perfect. Participants know this. One thing did make it special. It was made to offer choice to the people who need it most. That right to choose is now being threatened. Changes in legislation mean the NDIS is more vulnerable than ever to losing what it was made for. There are growing questions needing answers – Who is looking out for my funding? And why is my right to choose being eroded?
NDIS block funding return
Older NDIS participants remember what it was like. Before the NDIS, somebody made decisions for you. What you needed for your disability, when you would get it, and who could help you.
The NDIS was built to change that. To hand back choice to people who knew best: the people living, or caring for those, with a disability.
Under the umbrella of ‘sustainability’, and the changes within the NDIS Amendment Act 2026, the government is currently pushing funding changes.
A reversal is underway. Home and living supports are set to return to block funding. This means that someone else, a provider, would again decide what people with disabilities need – and when and how they can get it.
Choice and the large-scale registered NDIS monopoly
Odessa in Sydney has fought for her daughter, Summer, always. When Summer was diagnosed with level-3 autism, she says she knew she was in for another battle.
“We self-managed. This allowed more flexibility with getting what I needed for her. She was non-verbal. I knew she needed AAC to communicate. I researched the technology. I researched the right apps, Proloquo2go, that she’d be able to learn. It meant she could communicate with us. It changed our lives”.
That freedom didn’t last, Odessa shares. “The government later deemed our self-managed funding ‘unnecessary’. I had my funding stripped so I could only use NDIS providers”.
“All the therapists she had established relationships with, working with specific technology, weren’t NDIS registered (they were small, the cost too high a hurdle). We had to stop all therapies we were doing”.
NDIS participant consumer choice
Odessa shares reduced choice impacts effective care.
“When you take your child to an appointment, a lot of time is spent teaching you how to be a speech therapist, occupational therapist or professional at home for the person with a disability you care for”.
“You’re expected to take on these roles, implement the strategies and carry the responsibility for your child’s disability progress. Yet, when it comes to choosing the resources that would best support them, that decision is left to someone who may spend an hour with your child every other week”.
Odessa asks, “how does that make sense?”
NDIS plan management consolidation
On top of block funding, there’s another choice hurdle. The plan management market is shrinking. The opportunity, to manage NDIS plans, is skewing to providers managing 50,000 plans.
Small plan managers, who know participants, their names, the challenges of disability, what actually helps, could be squeezed out.
Over 1,400 small plan managers on the front-lines of protecting participants against unnecessary invoices, and protecting genuine claims against fraudulent, won’t be able to exist or scrutinise.
Small providers positioned to protect participants, and the scheme, against exploitation are vital. But they’re being edged out.
NDIS participant rights
The right to choose is critical. Block funding and NDIS provider monopoly is a system worse off with delays and rising costs.
Rigidity, against genuine need, can bring harm, Odessa says. “Our non-verbal child needed help. The waitlist for new registered therapists in our area was either closed or over a year long wait.”
Choice reduction means weeks, if not months, of compromised care and living, “basically any time I need to purchase something for Summer now, it needs to be approved in a written statement done by a therapist we can’t even access”.
“The carer [NDIS parent or participant] is the one who knows the daily needs”, Odessa says, “sees what works and what doesn’t. They are on the ground with the disability, they are there for the moments when support is actually needed, we should be respected to choose, to action that choice, and be able to choose the best and most affordable option”.
“Why is the person spending the most time caring for them [or experiencing the disability] not given the same freedom, respect and autonomy to choose the resources they believe and know are the best?”