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Before you read another word, I want you to hold onto this.
Nothing about your child's plan changes tomorrow.
The new reasonable and necessary NDIS criteria passed as part of the Securing the NDIS for Future Generations Act, with Royal Assent on 20 August 2026. But passing a law and switching it on are two different things, and this switch isn’t due to switch on until AT LEAST 1 February 2027. Remember the Needs Assessment and New Framework plans that were going to be launched in September 2025? It’s been pushed back to April 2027 and even then that is no guarantee.
So if you are reading this in a panic because someone posted a screenshot in a Facebook group at 11pm, take a breath. You have time.
I have read the amendments properly. Some of it is just writing down what the NDIA has been doing for years. Some of it is new, and one bit has me watching very closely.
How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. So lets start munching.
What does reasonable and necessary NDIS funding actually mean right now?
Section 34 of the NDIS Act is the guidelines the NDIA use when deciding what NDIS supports to put funding for in your NDIS plan. This isn’t a “choose one” list. EVERYTHING must be ticked off in order for funding for a certain support to end up in a plan.
Right now, that list looks like this:
- The support is necessary to address needs arising directly from an impairment your child actually meets the disability or early intervention requirements for
- It will help your child pursue the goals in their statement of goals and aspirations
- It will help them undertake activities that support social and economic participation
- It represents value for money
- It will be, or is likely to be, effective and beneficial, having regard to current good practice
- It takes account of what it is reasonable to expect families, carers, informal networks and the community to provide
- It is an NDIS support
Here is the thing most of the commentary is missing. Those seven criteria are not being replaced in February 2027. What is being added is a layer of detail underneath them, telling the delegate how to apply criteria (c), (d) and (e), plus one new criterion. It is the existing test with a much more prescriptive instruction manual bolted on. So this could also be a good thing, its giving you and your supports a map.
Two changes that have already happened
Until 27 August 2026 there was a note sitting at the bottom of section 34(1). It said:
a participant's disability support needs arising from an impairment in relation to which the participant meets the disability requirements or the early intervention requirements may be affected by a variety of factors, including environmental factors or the impact of another impairment in relation to which the participant does not meet either of those requirements.
In plain English, that note said: your child is a whole human being. Their environment matters. Their other diagnoses matter, even the ones that did not get them through the NDIS door.
That note is gone. It was removed on 27 August 2026, at the same time one of the things on the reasonable and necessary checklist had a very small, however important change. Checklist item number one (which was only introduced in October 2024 for my other NDIS legislation nerds playing along) changed from needs "arising from" an impairment to needs arising directly from an impairment.
Why it matters: the Federal Court had confirmed that "arising from" only required the eligible impairment to be a part of the picture which created the need for an NDIS support, not the only cause. Now, you can only buy supports that help your child’s eligible impairments.
What this looks like in real life
Zara is nine. She got into the NDIS on the basis of her intellectual disability (eligible impairment = intellectual). She also has ADHD (technically, a neurological impairment) however she did not meet the criteria to have neurological impairment added to her file.
Zara needs continuous 1:1 supervision in the community. This cannot be provided by a parent who is also supervising two younger children.
Some of that is Zara’s intellectual disability. She doesn't reliably understand road safety, and she doesn't recognise when a situation isn't safe.
Some of it is her ADHD. She's impulsive, and she bolts.
Under the old wording, her mum never had to untangle those two things. The intellectual disability was clearly part of what created the need for supervision, and that was enough. The support worker hours were funded.
Under the new wording, the NDIA can ask a sharper question. Is this need coming directly from the intellectual impairment, or is it coming from the ADHD?
If the honest answer is "both," that is no longer an automatic yes.
And if a support is only needed because of her ADHD, it won’t be funded and you cannot use existing funding flexibly. Zara did not meet the threshold to have neurological impairment added to her file when she applied to become an NDIS participant.
So this is the bit to take to your next report. Zara's mum isn't losing the supervision hours. She needs her team to write about road safety and the danger awareness, clearly and on their own, rather than one blended paragraph about Zara needing supervision in the community.
How is value for money changing for equipment and assistive technology?
Now we get into NDIS nerd territory, and this is the section I would read twice if your child uses assistive technology.
Law says: the delegate must consider whether comparable supports are available at a lower cost, and if so, whether the cheaper one is better value.
There has always been an unwritten rule that cheaper does not automatically equal value for money. You could justify a more expensive option by showing why it worked for your child. That is still possible, but the comparison needs to be made crystal clear. If you know there is genuinely a cheaper wheelchair, continence product or low cost AT item, be proactive and tell the Agency why that cheaper option does not mean value for money for your child.
The contradiction that gives me the ick: we cannot buy a cheap regulation tool from Kmart because it is an “everyday item”, but we must justify why we are not buying the cheapest disability-specific version of something which already has the “disability tax” added. Pick a lane! Anywho, I digress.
Law says: For equipment and modifications, the delegate must consider whether the participant's circumstances are likely to change in the short term in a way that would affect their need for it. If they are, the delegate must presume, unless satisfied by evidence to the contrary, that value for money means leasing.
"Short term" is not defined anywhere in the Act. Trust me, I checked. The phrase does not appear in the current compilation at all. And for children, circumstances change in the short term almost by definition. Growth. Starting school. A change in postural needs. A delegate reading that line broadly could apply the leasing presumption to most paediatric AT requests, in a market where leasing options are thin to non-existent.
That is the risk. Not that your child misses out on the equipment. That the funding gets structured in a way the market cannot deliver.
The words "unless satisfied by evidence to the contrary" are your way in. If your AT assessor can say why purchase is appropriate despite growth, say it in the report. Do not wait to be asked.
How will the NDIA decide if a support is effective and beneficial?
Under new subsection (1E), the law now basically says that a delegate must consider evidence about how useful something will be in the below order of importance:
- Research and evidence that is published, peer reviewed and generalisable
- Evidence of effectiveness having regard to your child's circumstances, including age and impairment
- Evidence of outcomes for your child from using the support in their previous plan, in improving, maintaining or reducing a decline in functional capacity
- Other matters the CEO considers appropriate
Peer reviewed research is about to become your therapist's best friend. If the term is new to you, it means research that has been evaluated and approved by experts in the same field before publication.
Here is what that looks like in real life. Say art or music therapy engages your child in a way a standard OT session never has, and you are seeing better emotional regulation as a result. There is oodles of evidence around OTs and how they can help build skills around emotional regulation. You would need evidence-based justification for why art or music therapy specifically reduces the functional impact of your child's disability and is better than OT. Bonus points for adding what it actually looked like trying to get your child to engage with an OT, and for showing that approach was wasting the Agency's money because your child did not want a bar of it.
Third on the list is considering how something worked specifically for your child which is promising however it will not be given the same weight as the two points above it.
Example
Noise cancelling headphones. Pippa’s sensitivity to noise is so very real and it results in a genuine fear. They are not a comfort item, they are sometimes the difference between us being able to leave the house as a family or not.
None of that is published, peer reviewed or generalisable. It sits at number three on the list.
So I would like to invite whoever curates the Agency's evidence pool to take Pippa somewhere with unexpected loud noises, stand there for ten minutes, and then tell me how non-evidence-based those headphones are.
That is the gap this hierarchy creates. Not that the Agency is wrong about the need for research. It’s the fact that what you have watched with your own eyes, every day, for years, now formally ranks below it.
One word of warning in this list, and I say this with love. Do not go into a plan reassessment asking for oodles of therapy funding whilst in the same report telling the Agency there has been little to no progress thinking this will help your case. I know we have been conditioned to only show the Agency the worst-case scenario. But if you tell them that the oodles of funding they gave you for therapy in the last plan didn't work and then ask for more of it, why would they spend the same amount of money again?
Not going to lie, this part "Other matters the CEO considers appropriate" makes me fecking nervous. It's basically the equivalent of a blank cheque for the Agency to make up any reason they think is good enough to say - nup - that's not effective and beneficial and we wont fund it.
It's also followed with another section underneath which basically says, even if you give the Agency everything you have in terms of peer reviewed, evidence based research, the Agency can still decide it is not enough.
I could use a drink about now.
The definition of “parental responsibility”
Law says: for a child, the delegate must take into account the presumption that parents are responsible for providing substantial care and support for their children. This is can be defined as including supervision, personal care, transport, emotional support and behavioural support.
Importantly, it says it does not include the additional care a child needs because their needs are substantially greater than other children of a similar age, because of their disability.
That second half is the protection, and it is now written into the Act.
This has always been the position, and it is exactly why the framing of a support request matters so much.
Saying "I need a support worker to help my child go into the community" is a big fat no. The Agency reads that through the lens of "what young child goes into the community on their own?" You take your kids to basketball, birthday parties, school, the library. They are not driving themselves.
What you need to show is that the support your child needs is in addition to what you would be doing as a parent of a child that age. So it needs to read more like:
- Johnny needs to be lifted onto the toilet when in the community
- Johnny needs 1:1 supervision in the community due to choking risk
- Johnny needs 1:1 supervision to manage behaviours of concern which include running into traffic, and this cannot be provided by a parent because Johnny has two younger siblings requiring 1:2 attention
See how I am not asking the NDIS to replace my parenting role?
Your allied health team have tools that map age-appropriate milestones for typically developing children. If you want one for yourself, I use the developmental milestones resource from ACECQA, built off the Early Years Learning Framework and the National Quality Standards. National, well respected, free.
Law says: the delegate must not be satisfied if the primary or substantial purpose of the support is to reduce burdens on parental time below what is reasonably expected, improve household efficiency, or give effect to a parent's preference for supports to be provided other than by parental care.
Plain english? We will not fund a support where the whole purpose is to make your life easier as a carer. It has to relate to your child's disability. It does not matter if it improves household efficiency, and it does not matter if you would prefer a support worker over out of school hours care for example.
Will the NDIA consider whether my family can actually cope?
Yes, and this came out of the Senate negotiations, and it is the one genuinely family-friendly addition in the amendments.
Law says: The delegate must consider:
- Whether relying on family, carers, informal networks or the community would expose your child or another person to a risk of harm, abuse or neglect that cannot reasonably be mitigated
- The desirability of supporting and strengthening informal supports rather than replacing them
- The capacity of your family or carers to provide support, having regard to the age of your family and carers, the intensity and type of support required, and whether it is age and gender appropriate for a particular family member to be providing it
So yes to everything above about parental responsibility, but now your actual capacity as a carer is a must be taken into consideration.
If you are struggling, get the evidence, my friend. GP letters. Free Carer Gateway counselling sessions. Letters from treating health professionals. But it cannot just talk about you struggling to parent in general. It has to be about how your capacity to provide disability related supports is affected.
I learned that the hard way. When I reached out to the Agency for help after my cervical cancer diagnosis, I was told to go to child protection. I can see now that I never talked specifically about how the help I need for Pippa was directly related to her disability related health needs. The PEG that was only 3 weeks old, the oxygen, the low tone, were impossible for me to manage while recovering from surgery and going through radiation. I assumed that would be obvious.
Oh, how wrong I was.
What I would actually do between now and February 2027
None of these requires you to panic, and all of them are useful regardless.
- Speak with your team about how each of your NDIS supports is matched to the eligible impairment.
- Ask your AT assessor about purchase versus lease and make sure they clearly outline why a purchase (if applicable) is the best thing for your babe.
- Ask your therapists for the peer reviewed evidence behind everything they recommend.
- Make sure any in home support requests are clearly demonstrating that the support they will be providing will not be replacing your parental responsibilities.
- If you are not coping in your caring roles, you need to show it. GP, Carer Gateway, treating team. Specific to disability related care.
FAQs
What are the reasonable and necessary criteria for NDIS? There are currently seven criteria in section 34 of the NDIS Act, and every one has to be met before a support can be funded. They cover the link to an eligible impairment, your child's goals, social and economic participation, value for money, whether the support is effective and beneficial, what families and informal supports are expected to provide, and whether it is an NDIS support.
Do the new criteria apply to my child's current plan? No. They start on 1 February 2027, they apply to new participants first, and they reach existing participants gradually at reassessment. Your current plan keeps operating under the criteria that applied when it was approved.
Does this affect self-managed families too? Yes. These rules govern what goes into a plan and how much funding sits behind it, so they apply no matter how the funding is managed afterwards. Self-managed, plan managed or agency managed, the criteria are the same.
Can I still challenge a decision made under the new criteria? Yes, and your review rights are not changing. You can request an internal review under section 100 within three months, and go to the Administrative Review Tribunal after that. Worth knowing that the amendments specifically say the new section 34 applies to review decisions made on or after 1 February 2027, even where the original decision was earlier.
Where to from here
I am not going to tell you these changes are fine, because parts of them are not.
You are not imagining that the system is making this harder than it needs to be. You are also not powerless in it.
If any of this has raised questions about your child's plan — or you're wondering whether having a plan manager in your corner would make navigating this easier — we'd love to have a chat.
It's free, it's no pressure, and it's just a conversation.
[Book a free discovery call with Kindship Plan Management →]
NDIS changes are coming thick and fast right now. If you'd rather hear about them from someone who's already read the fine print, we've got you.
No jargon. No panic. Just the stuff that actually matters for your family.
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