SMALL PROVIDERS, BIG SAFEGUARDS:

 As small, values-driven NDIS providers, we’ve seen this sector evolve from a policy framework to a lifeline for thousands. Many of us began this work with heart, grounded in community and committed to dignity, autonomy, and inclusion. Over time, we’ve built ethical, agile services that uphold the spirit of the NDIS Act and reflect the principles of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD).

We’ve never resisted accountability. In fact, we welcome it. We want clearer standards, better training, and regulation that lifts the bar. Because we know what quality looks like. We live it every day. Like the Disability Royal Commission, we believe reforms are urgently needed to prevent neglect, uphold rights, and promote true choice and control. But reforms must be implemented with care, and with the voices of those who do the work.

The Royal Commission was unequivocal: safeguarding is not just about compliance, it is about proactive, embedded support. In Volume 10: Disability Services, the Commission recognised support coordination as a key mechanism for safeguarding people at heightened risk, including those in supported accommodation, with limited informal supports, or navigating complex systems.

Support coordinators are often the first to identify risk. We spot patterns across silos. We notice when someone hasn’t answered the door, when their mood changes, or when a provider isn’t showing up. We’re the ones helping people understand their rights, escalate concerns, and recover after abuse. Our role is not hierarchical. It is relational. And when properly funded, it is one of the most cost-effective and preventative tools the system has.

But right now, the direction of the Annual Pricing Review (APR) threatens this function. If the price cap for support coordination remains stagnant or is cut further, community-based providers who are most trusted by participants may not survive.

The Commission’s final report made it clear: institutional neglect thrives in impersonal, large-scale systems. When services become transactional, participants become invisible. The risk isn’t just inefficiency. It is abuse, as highlighted in Volume 4: Realising the Human Rights of People with Disability.

Participants deserve options. They need coordinators who know their context and stay long enough to make a difference. Replacing diverse, community-led providers with homogenous, corporate-style entities, under the guise of cost-efficiency, risks replicating the very conditions that led to the Commission’s inquiry.

The Commission went further, recommending (in Recommendation 10.3) that participants at increased risk should have guaranteed funding for face-to-face support coordination at least monthly. In Recommendation 10.4, it called for urgent examination of quality and consistency, especially for participants facing multiple layers of marginalisation.

This is not the time to scale down. It is the time to invest in support coordination as a safeguarding layer, one that works precisely because it is relational, not bureaucratic.

We are not opposed to reform. We have been calling for it: for clearer expectations, streamlined systems, better cross-agency collaboration, and stronger protections for both participants and workers. But the Royal Commission also recognised that small providers are often those most trusted, most culturally embedded, and most able to deliver nuanced, person-led care.

When reforms ignore or sideline the voices of small providers, they risk undermining the very co-design principles championed in Volume 12: Beyond the Royal Commission, including the call for genuine, inclusive, and rights-based reform driven by people with disability and those closest to them.

To decision-makers: we urge you to listen to the evidence. The Royal Commission was not a call for cost-cutting. It was a call for justice. Its vision was clear: uphold rights, embed safeguards, and build a future where people with disability are safe, respected, and included.

To do this, we must protect the role of support coordination. We must fund it adequately, develop it with care, and recognise its value as a front-line safeguard. And we must ensure reforms do not sweep away the people and services who have been quietly delivering the NDIS as it was meant to be — human, accountable, and led by purpose.

We are ready to build this future, together. But we cannot do it if we are priced out of the room.

We call for an immediate increase to the price limit for support coordination by July 1. 

Without it, we risk losing the professionals best placed to realise the very outcomes the Royal Commission calls for.