04/08/2026
https://www.facebook.com/share/1HRdDa2rG8/?mibextid=wwXIfr
This message landed in my inbox after my Senate speech, and I haven’t stopped thinking about it.
The mum who wrote it gave me permission to share her son’s story anonymously because she wants people to understand what the NDIS can achieve when it’s allowed to do what it was designed to do.
THIS is exactly what I was talking about in Canberra.
Her son is now 21 and autistic. He wasn’t struggling because he couldn’t learn. He was struggling because the environments around him weren’t designed for the way his brain worked. He was bright, he wanted to learn, but classrooms could become overwhelming. When that happened, he didn’t need punishment or consequences. He needed ten minutes somewhere quiet so his nervous system could settle.
One school understood that. They had a sensory room and a breakout room. If he became overwhelmed, he’d let his teacher know, spend a few minutes regulating, then walk straight back into class. He stayed on top of his work. He was getting almost straight As.
It was working!
Then a new principal arrived and removed both rooms 🤦🏻♀️ too many of us know this bloody story.
His autism didn’t suddenly become “worse”, the support disappeared.
Almost immediately he started running out of class and hiding around the school because he had nowhere safe to go. His grades dropped. School refusal began. His mental health deteriorated so badly that he was telling his parents he didn’t want to be alive anymore. Eventually his family had to pull him out of school altogether for a term just to keep him safe.
This happens all the time and it pi**es me off royally.
Someone is doing well, so it’s decided they don’t need the support anymore. The support disappears, everything falls apart, and somehow we end up blaming the person instead of asking whether the support was the reason they were doing well in the first place.
Thankfully his family found another school that understood him. Around the same time, the NDIS gave them access to supports they simply couldn’t have afforded otherwise. He saw an OT, an exercise physiologist, a counsellor and had support workers.
Then I got to my favourite part…
His passion has always been cars.
He finally got his licence and desperately wanted to go to car meets, but he had no idea how to break into that social world. He didn’t know how to walk up to strangers, introduce himself or become part of a community where everyone else already seemed to know each other.
So they used his NDIS funding for a support worker.
Not forever, just long enough to help him find his feet.
That support worker went to car meets with him, helped him introduce himself, start conversations and build confidence until eventually… they weren’t needed anymore.
Today he has a solid group of mates. He’s part of a car club and even helps organise events. He works full-time, is about to start studying again, travelled interstate to buy himself a car, budgets, cooks, cleans, is saving for a house and is currently building a Corolla into an endurance race car with one of his friends.
His mum told me she genuinely believes that without those supports, particularly that support worker, he’d probably still be sitting at home in his bedroom, isolated, playing computer games and struggling to find work.
Instead, he’s living the life he wanted.
This is why I get so frustrated when every conversation about the NDIS starts and ends with cost.
Because THIS is the return on investment nobody seems interested in talking about.
This young guy isn’t dependent on a support worker anymore, because the support worker did their JOB and built his capacity.
They weren’t there to do life FOR him, they were there to help him build one.
I KNOW this isn’t everyone’s outcome.
Not every disabled person is going to need less support, and they shouldn’t be expected to.
For a lot of people, success isn’t building capacity, it’s MAINTAINING it.
(That’s every bit as important, and I’ll do another post about that because I think it’s a conversation we get wrong all the time.)
BUT THIS is PART of what the NDIS was supposed to do! It’s a bloody important part!
This is what can happen when we INVEST in the right supports, at the right time, for our young people.
Also, the support worker that changed this young man’s life?
Funded under Social & Community Participation.
Not exactly looking like an optional extra now, is it, Marky Mark & the rotten bunch?
