Later today, government will announce funding for an innovative social connections network for Autistic people. The new program demonstrates a commitment to supporting individuals outside their plans and finding new ways to extend the reach of community resources.

abilityNEWS can exclusively reveal later this morning NDIS Minister Jenny McAlistair will announce a new, $19 million program to create a social connections network for Autistic people.

The national program, the Improving Social Connections Framework, will roll out over the next four years.

It will enable Autism Spectrum Australia to develop a national hub supporting a network of peer mentors across the country. This will in turn support other Autistic people as they develop their own connections within the broader community.

Part of the National Autism Strategy, this network will harness the power of lived experience to offer specialised understanding, advice and support to others. The idea is to create a spreading, self-sustaining network that will shift power to Austic people, allowing them to develop their own links within the broader community.

Perhaps even more importantly, the scheme represents a first step towards the government’s commitment to develop and extend alternative supports as NDIS funding is reduced.

It’s understood McAllister believes this program provides a solid foundation for the further spread of local peer support programs and activities across the country.

A self-service hub will provide tools, resources, training and videos supporting Autistic people who will become the facilitators of the program.

Autism Spectrum Australia (ASPECT) will partner with Reframing Autism (an Autistic-led organisation) and other Autistic-led organisations to develop the Improving Social Connections Framework.

Most importantly, this is what reform is supposed to look like. Money.

McAllister’s commitment to spend more than $19 million over four years designing a framework, building a self-service hub, and funding the roll-out of local community partners and support peer-led programs across the country is significant.

Crucially, it demonstrates providing individual supports through the NDIS isn’t the only way to assist Autistic people. The framework will create safe and inclusive spaces where Autistic people can connect and participate in community life.

McAllister appears particularly enthusiastic about the way Autistic-led organisations have shown how government and community can work together.

She’s effectively thrown down a challenge to the disability community: come up with new ways of tackling problems and we’ll try and find ways to fund them.

_________________________

[continued from newsletter]

This is not a top-down approach - it’s a ‘by, with and for’ framework that allows success to reinforce success.

The NDIS debate has become trapped between two hard truths. The Scheme cannot keep growing indefinitely. But people with disability cannot be pushed out of individualised plans unless something real exists beyond them.

This creates that something.

The money is modest compared with the NDIS. But the principle is large.

McAllister is beginning to meet the promise at the centre of the reform push, that good support does not always need to come through an individual plan. It can be targeted at need, built in group settings, and shaped by lived experience.

This program alone will not settle the argument over Labor’s NDIS cuts, but it does change the terms of that debate.

The test is no longer whether government can remove supports from the Scheme, but how well it’s building structures outside it.

This new framework is not the NDIS, and that is the point.

For years, the Scheme carried too much. It became the only place families went. Other systems were missing, weak or indifferent. For Autistic people, especially children and young people, the NDIS often became the only door that opened.

Labor says this has to change.

Its broader reform argument is that the NDIS should return to a more targeted role, while other supports are built around it. That is the theory behind foundational supports, Thriving Kids and the National Autism Strategy.

The risk has always been obvious, that government would cut first and, maybe, build later.

And this is why this announcement matters. It is not proof that the new system will work, but It is proof that at least some money is beginning to move in the direction the Government has promised.

The National Autism Strategy 2025–2031 sets out a vision for a safe and inclusive society for Autistic people, and the Government has said its reference group will ensure Autistic and autism community experience continues to shape implementation.

This new funding fits that architecture.

Aspect will not do it alone. It will partner with Reframing Autism, an Autistic-led organisation, other Autistic-led organisations and Autistic people. Autistic people are meant to be employed across the project in leadership, decision-making and advisory roles.

That is important.

Programs for Autistic people have too often been designed around Autistic people, not with them. This one at least begins in the right place.

The politics of NDIS reform has made individual plans the centre of almost every argument, which is understandable. That’s the way the scheme was framed to begin with. But not every useful support has to sit inside a personal plan.

Peer support is not weaker because it is shared - of anything it’ stronger. Social connection is not less valuable because it is delivered through a local group, and this is precisely the kind of program the reform debate needs more of.

It both targets need without pretending individual packages are the only solution and recognises that loneliness, exclusion and lack of peer connection are not minor issues. They shape health, confidence, and participation in life more generally.

The NDIS argument will remain fierce as it should.

But this points to a new path that should make support more accessible than ever before.