Foundational Supports and Occupational Therapists - Insights to shape supports for Children with disability, developmental delay and their families

Introduction

The Commonwealth government is leading work with all Australian governments to develop a Foundational Supports Strategy. This will guide the work of individual states and territories to establish local systems of foundational supports. While Foundational Supports are intended to cover a range of groups including children and young people, people with psychosocial disability, and users of assistive technology, the current focus for consultation is early childhood supports.

What is OTA doing?
Occupational Therapy Australia (OTA) is actively working to ensure that disability system reforms recognise and support the role of occupational therapists in all areas, whether supports are funded by the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS), state and territory foundational support programs, or through mainstream services.

Your input to this survey and other feedback mechanisms will inform our consultation responses and support our collaboration with new expert advisory groups to develop position papers and resources, promoting a clear vision for occupational therapy in Australia’s evolving disability system. The survey includes a broad range of questions about your work and your views on mainstream and foundational supports. You may select the questions relevant to you and skip those that are not.

If you are interested in additional contact from OTA in relation to our work on foundational supports, please add your name and email address at the end of the survey.

What are Foundational Supports?
There are two broad areas of foundational supports being proposed: General Foundational Supports and Targeted Foundational Supports. General supports are primarily focused on making information about disability and disability services more accessible to people. The Commonwealth is currently consulting on both general and targeted supports, however OTA is primarily focused on targeted supports as these will be most relevant for occupational therapists.

The Commonwealth has provided the following description of Targeted Foundational Supports in its consultation paper (link: https://engage.dss.gov.au/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Foundational-Supports-Consultation-Paper.pdf).

Targeted Foundational Supports are for children with developmental delay and their families, who need more assistance than mainstream services and General Foundational Supports.

Targeted Foundational Supports are intended to:

help families better understand their child’s specific needs, how they understand their world and how to help their development
give more tailored, early intervention support to help the child develop in the area they are delayed.

Supports can offer specialised, evidence-based early intervention. They can be low intensity or periodic, to help a child’s development, such as family-centred allied health. For children and families with complex support needs it might be intensive family support to help build their knowledge, skills and abilities (one-on-one support). A child getting Targeted Foundational Supports may also access General Foundational Supports and mainstream services.

Targeted supports are not intended for:

children with disability with impairments that are, or are likely to be, permanent and result in substantially reduced functional capacity requiring supports for the person’s lifetime
children with developmental delay that have substantial reduction in functional capacity with the need for individually planned and coordinated supports and services over an extended period.

These children will continue to be assessed under the disability and/or early intervention requirements of the NDIS Act and Rules and, where eligible, receive supports through the NDIS.