Inclusive community programs like AllPlay Dance are more than just feel-good stories, they’re like a blueprint for smart support. Thriving Kids could scale such successes - but only if it learns the right lessons.

It doesn’t look like therapy. There’s no clipboard, no white coat. Just a group of children laughing and yelling as they follow movement instructions in a school hall. But, as Professor Nicole Rinehart explains in an article for Monash University Lens, the activity isn’t just about dance.

“It’s about smarter delivery of therapy, inclusion, and opportunity. This isn’t just about dance,” says Rinehart, the program’s co-founder. “It’s about productivity, sustainability, and outcomes.”

It’s important to note that Rinehart doesn’t link the program’s success to the government’s new Thriving Kids initiative. Her study was completed well before that announcement. Nevertheless, it does suggest the possibility of success where the NDIS model has struggled.

AllPlay isn’t run in clinics. It’s embedded in schools and after-hours programs, allowing children with disability to stay engaged with their peers, and allowing parents to remain in the workforce.

It’s community-based. Evidence-informed. Low-cost. High-impact.

Informed by research from Monash and Deakin, and funded through philanthropic partnerships, AllPlay shows what can happen when support is embedded where children already live and learn.

This - accidentally - provides a sharp contrast to the current NDIS model. This relies on out-of-class individual therapy and often clinic-based appointments.

Health Minister Mark Butler’s Thriving Kids proposal is, intended to be the reverse of that (well, at least as far as we know, given the detail has yet to be announced). The fund aims to shift supports into schools and communities. The risk is that the model becomes a rebranded NDIS-lite.

AllPlay’s approach shows what Thriving Kids could become. But only with the right partnerships, delivery settings and evaluation tools.

__________________________________

[continue reading from newsletter]

The NDIS wasn't designed to support a population-wide shift in early intervention for developmental delay and autism. As other supports have been closed, however, this is what it’s become for so many children.

The result is a fragmented system, riddled with inefficiencies. Families are left to navigate complex silos, while critics say clinic-based therapy has often isolated children rather than including them.

Enter Thriving Kids. Butler’s initiative is supposedly aimed at addressing the very flaws the current system created. But its success will depend on exactly how these supports are delivered and not just who funds them.

That’s where AllPlay comes in.

The program embeds inclusive therapies into everyday environments, whether preschools, schools, or community halls. It’s co-designed with families. It uses research to measure outcomes. And it partners with philanthropy to de-risk innovation before government picks it up.

This isn’t new thinking. The proof is in the practice.

Rinehart and her co-authors argue that shifting support out of clinics and into community life achieves three things:

Thriving Kids could replicate this success—if it learns the right lessons.

That means five concrete actions:

This isn’t simply about cost-cutting. It’s about cost-shifting toward smarter, more inclusive systems that deliver better results for children and society alike.